At this time, Minkus began to try his hand at conducting. Five pieces for the violin were published in 1846. Minkus began composing for his instrument while he was still a student. On the 18th October 1845, an announcement in the Viennese newspaper Der Humorist commented on the performances of the previous season and noted that “… (Minkus’s playing featured) a conservative style with a glittering performance.” Soon the young Minkus was appearing in various concert halls as a soloist of note, having been declared a child prodigy by the public and critics. Minkus made his public début at a recital in Vienna at the age of 8.
At the age of four, he began to receive private lessons in the violin and from 1838 to 1842, he began his musical studies at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. It is possible that he composed for his father’s Tanzkapelle, one of many such orchestras in the Imperial Austrian capital. This may have influenced the young Minkus to become a part of the world of music. He opened a restaurant in the Innere Stadt district of Vienna that featured its own small orchestra. Minkus’s father was a wholesale merchant of wine in Moravia, Austria and Hungary. Minkus was of Jewish descent – his parents converted to Catholicism not long before their relocation to Vienna and were married on the following day. His father, Theodor Johann Minkus, was born in 1795 in Groß-Meseritsch, Moravia (known today as Velké Meziříčí near Brno, Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic) and his mother, Maria Franziska Heimann was born in 1807 in Pest, Hungary. He was born as Aloysius Bernhard Philipp Minkus on the 23rd March 1826 in Vienna, Austria. Ludwig Fyodorovich Minkus (also known as Léon Minkus) was one of the greatest ballet composers who co-created with Petipa some of the greatest and most famous of classical ballets.
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