The American violinist Michael Rabin (1936-1972) died at the very early age of thirty-five. The cause of his death was given as a fall, though he had been suffering from mental health issues for some time beforehand. Rabin's father played violin with the New York Philharmonic, while his mother was a pianist. He began to make music at the age of three, and made his first public appearance at eleven; just three years later, at the age of fourteen, he launched his international career with a highly acclaimed concert at Carnegie Hall.

He gave performances of breathtaking quality. For many years, he played the ‘Kubelik’ Guarneri us del Gesù of 1735. Audiences were in thrall to him in Europe and America and especially in Israel, where he often gave concerts. His programmes often included the most popular violin concertos and some of the principal sonatas. He saw it as a great honour therefore, when Paul Creston dedicated his Second Violin Concerto to him. The premiere was given under the baton of Georg Solti on 17 November 1960 in Los Angeles and the recording made of it rounds off this documentation of an outstanding artist whom American critics called ‘a true and rare genius’. Rabin refused to enter a recording studio after 1959, and so the studio and live recordings he did make, and that form his musical legacy, have continued to this day to attract considerable attention.