BRILLIANT QUARTET

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26772, 15 May 1948, Page 8

BRILLIANT QUARTET

QUEENSLAND STATE GROUP RECITAL NEXT WEEK The Queensland State String Quartet, led by Ernest Llewellyn, who is regarded as Australia’s finest violinist, will give a recital in Dunedin next Thursday night. The recital is being presented by the University of Otago under the provision of the Alfred Fels Memorial Fund. Before the quartet’s New Zealand tour ends on June 18 it will give 28 concerts and broadcasts, as well as special concerts for school children.

The Queensland String Quartet is said to be the best chamber music combination ever heard in Australia. Four years ago the Queensland Direc-tor-general oi Education persuaded the State Government to engage a string quartet to play to children in the schools, and to-day the outcome of an experiment that was laughed at is a firmly-established institution. In Queensland the quartet has a collective audience of from 90,000 to 100,000 children and adults every year. Besides playing nearly everything in the list of standard chamber music, compositions that the .quartet has introduced to Australian audiences are modern music by Hindemith, Bartok, Walton, Bax, Prokoffief, and the New Zealand composer, Alfred Hill. The quartet’s personnel is: Ernest Llewellyn (leader), violinist, aged 33; Harold Taberner, violinist, 31; David Powell, viola player, 45; and Don Howley, ’cello, 46. Taberner was born in New Zealand, and was at one time a member of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.