Endre Wolf (6 November 1913 – 29 March 2011) was a Hungarian classical violinist, born in Budapest. He performed the works of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, Beethoven and many others.[1]
Wolf was born in Budapest to a Jewish family from Chernivtsi in Ukraine and raised in Hungary.[2] His mother was a seamstress and his father a watchmaker from Chernivtsi, Ukraine. When he was four, Wolf persuaded his parents to buy him a violin and he was taught by the well known Hungarian musician Jenő Hubay along with Leó Weiner.[3] He received his musical education at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music and in 1936 was offered a post at the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden. The Hungarian police refused to give him a passport but after his aunt showed them a letter from Gothenburg and told them, "Here is another opportunity to get rid of a Jew", he was allowed to leave Hungary to spend the war in neutral Sweden and emigrate to England after the war.[4]
Between 1954 and 1964, Wolf was a professor at the Academy of Music in Manchester and was elected to the Royal Academy of Music in 1973.[5] He made appearances in the Henry Wood Proms and Royal Albert Hall in London. Endre Wolf played on a violin by Omobono Stradavari.[6] He married twice, first to a German woman named Antoinette which ended in divorce during his time in Manchester and second to violinist Jennifer Nuttall-Wolf who was a professor at the Malmö Academy of Music. Wolf died in Sweden in 2011, aged 97.