Victoria Kamhi

Victoria Kamhi — Biography

Born in Istanbul in 1902 to a Sephardic Jewish family, Victoria Kamhi was a pianist best remembered as the wife of the Spanish composer and piano virtuoso Joaquín Rodrigo. Trained under noted teachers of the era, including Lalewicz, Lévy, and Viñes, she met Rodrigo in Paris in 1929 and married him on 19 January 1933 in his native Valencia; the couple lived for a time in France and Germany before settling in Spain in 1939. Their only child, Cecilia, was born in January 1941.

After marrying, Kamhi set aside her own performing career to become the closest collaborator and lifelong assistant of her husband, who had been blind since childhood, and she is also credited as a librettist for some of his works. Her memoir of their shared life, published as "De la mano de Joaquín Rodrigo: Historia de nuestra vida," was translated into numerous languages and remains one of the principal accounts of the couple's decades-long artistic partnership.

Victoria Kamhi died in Madrid on 21 July 1997 and was laid to rest alongside her husband in the Aranjuez cemetery.