QUARTET AND CLARINET

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31786, 17 September 1968, Page 8

QUARTET AND CLARINET

Ken Wilson (right), the New Zealand clarinettist, will appear with the Benthien Quartet (below) in Christchurch tomorrow night during a tour for the Chamber Music Federation.

Mr Wilson will join the quartet in Reger’s Quintet in A Major, a work written during the (European) winter of 1915-16 and first performed on November 16, 1916, six months after Reger’s death. The quartet will complete the concert with two major works Haydn’s Quartet in E Flat and Beethoven’s Quartet in F Major.

From Christchurch Mr Wilson and the quartet will go to Timaru, for a concert on Thursday, and towards the end of the month they will appear in Nelson and Blenheim. The tour started last week in Hastings, and will take them to 16 New Zealand centres. After it ends in Auckland on October 8 they will go to Suva, where they have been Invited by the Fiji Arts Club to give a concert.

The quartet visited New Zealand in 1963, and since then has toured Britain, the United States, and Asia. There is one new face in it on this tour—the cellist, Edwin Koch.

This year the quartet became the only foreign group to perform with success at the Berwald Festival at Stockholm. Just before leaving Europe for the New Zealand tour the quartet appeared at the Bregenz Festival in Austria, and on its return will play at the German Mozart Festival and the Festival of the Ruhr at Recklinghausen. The leader of the group, Ulrich Benthien, says the greatest hobby of the group is the quartet itself, but he also studies German literature of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Mr Wilson, a foundation member of the National Orchestra, is now living in Auckland, where he is a member of the Symphonia of Auckland. He has had works performed, published and recorded in the United States.