Conductor Debuts...

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32166, 9 December 1969, Page 13

Conductor Debuts...

“A promising, if overambitious start, was the “Daily Telegraph’s” view of the first public concert given in London this week by the New Symphonia and its New Zealand conductor, Ulric Burstein.

The New Symphonia is a full symphony orchestra made up almost entirely of young musicians such as Mr Burstein, who is from Tauranga. Mostly its members attend musical academies in London.

The orchestra plans to specialise in neglected works of Czechoslovakian and Scandinavian composers. For its first public concert, given at no less an auditorium than the Royal Albert Hall, Mr Burstein chose a Schubert overture, Dvorak’s “The Golden Spinning Wheel” and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4. The “Daily Telegraph” praised much of the orchestra’s work, notably that by the strings and the brass. But it noted that the second and third pieces chosen inevitably brought difficulties for young musicians. It doubted whether the Bruckner symphony had ever been chosen previously for an orchestra's first public concert. The New Symphonia, which was formed earlier this year, has already numbered among its players several New Zealanders, notably the winner of the 1968 Stella Murray Memorial Prize, Jan Keay, of Palmerston North, who has now left to become coprincipal horn in the City of

Birmingham Orchestra, reports Zalia Thomas from London. Colin Davis recently attended a rehearsal of the New Symphonia and enthused about the discipline and accomplishments of the orchestra in a relatively short time. Ulric Burstein took his first piano lessons at the age of eight, at his home town of Katikati, from Georg Tintner, who had from time to time conducted a choir run by Mr Burstein’s father. During his final two years at Mount Albert Grammar School in Auckland he studied under Henry Shirley and Esther Parker, and he gained his L.R.S.N. under Miss Parker in 1962. His first experience of conducting was with the Mount Eden Operatic Society in a Victor Herbert operetta in 1963. After four years at Auckland University, where

he majored in German, he spent one year at Teachers’ Training College and taught for a short time as a relief teacher in Auckland.

While at university he did some recital work and returned to the Mount Eden Operatic Society to conduct “Die Fledermaus” and “Carmen.”

In 1965 he again received favourable comment from the critics when he was musical director to the Auckland University revue. Later he conducted a concert by the Auckland Harmonic Society in the Auckland Town Hall. He then wrote to Colin Davis, asking to become a pupil. Mr Davis replied that he did not normally take pupils but that Mr Burstein should get in touch with him when he came to London. Unfortunately, when Mr Burstein arrived in England Colin Davis was in Adelaide, but Mr Burstein got an introduction to John Pritchard, under whom he studied for a few months. After Colin Davis’s return from Australia an interview was arranged, and Mr Burstein says; “I found him to be one of the few great musicians who is an equally great person.” Mr Burstein receives a certain amount of tuition under Mr Davis, but was told by him: “I had to do it the hard way and I do not propose to show you any easy way out.” Since his arrival in England Mr Burstein has had considerable experience with suburban choirs and operatic societies, and one of bis major tasks has been the translation, with the help of his Czech-born cousin, Katarina Edwards, of the Czech Opera “Dalibor,” by Smetana.