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Michael Rabin: a brief flame

2026-05-08T08:40:00

Rabin

Michael Rabin, one of the most gifted violinists the US has ever produced, enjoyed a short but dazzling career before his untimely death at 35. To mark what would have been his 90th birthday this May, Jonathan Woolf examines Rabin’s legacy and his central place in the history of American ...

The violin world has suffered its share of tragic losses – Josef Hassid, Eda Kersey, Ginette Neveu, Ossy Renardy and Yulian Sitkovetsky among them. Certainly, one of the most grievous was that of Michael Rabin, who would have been 90 years old this year – only ten years older than Itzhak Perlman, who dedicated his own recording of Paganini’s Caprices to Rabin’s memory…

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