Mr L. D. Austin, Music Critic, Conductor, Dead

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31339, 8 April 1967, Page 12

Mr L. D. Austin, Music Critic, Conductor, Dead

(N.Z. Preu Association;

WELLINGTON, April 7. The death occurred in hospital this morning of Mr L. D. Austin, aged 90, of Wellington, a noted music critic, conductor, pianist and composer.

He was also the writer of countless hundreds of “to the editor” letters.

English born, Mr Austin migrated to Australia in 1908 after his marriage. He arrived in New Zealand in 1910 and for some years was the highest paid musician in the country. He formed and led an excellent theatre orchestra in Wellington and later conducted the Otago Theatre Orchestra in Dunedin.

For many years he wrote a Saturday music column in the “Evening Star," Dunedin. Mr Austin was a strong op ponent of modernism in music and denounced compositions which ignored the principle that music should consist of beautiful sounds. At 70 he won a composer’s competition in Wellington and several of his pieces of the piano have been taken into the repertoire of such world-famous pianists as Louis Kentner and Moura Lympany. As a teacher, too, Mr Austin was gifted, including among many of his brilliant pupils the fine young New Zealand pianist, Lola Johnson.

Mr L. J. Humphries has o*®n appointed a member of the Little River Domain Board in place of Mr M. C. Barclay, who has resigned. Mr R. F. Webb has been appointed an additional member of the board.

It was as “L.DA.,” the writer of multitudinous letters to newspapers that Mr Austin was best known.