Quartet Pro Musica - 2013 Concert Series

Event information

Quartet Pro Musica will be playing three works from the classical repertoire for this, their first concert at St Peter's Eaton Square:

Haydn – String Quartet in Bb, Op.76, No.4 (‘Sunrise’)

Turina – La Oración del Torero for String Quartet (1925)

Dvorak – String Quartet No.12 in F (‘American’), Op.96

Drinks will be served in the interval. St Peter's is a 5-10 minute walk from Sloane Square Underground Station.

The Quartet

Patrick Halling was born in Tasmania. He was a soloist for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the age of 12. On arrival in England, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall with Max Rostal. He played with the Hirsch Quartet for nine years, before starting Quartet Pro Musica in 1955. Over the next twenty years, the quartet played on numerous recorded concerts with the BBC and toured extensively. From the early 1960s onwards, his commercial music career flourished, when he became much in demand in all musical genres, from film music, recordings, jazz and modern classical. In chamber music, he has continued to play an ever widening repertoire with particular emphasis in recent years on new works & 20th century English music. Click on the Royal Academy of Music to read more about Pat’s career

Keith Lewis is a graduate and a Fellow of Trinity College of Music. He worked in Venezuela, playing orchestral and chamber music. In London he has been a long-standing member of the English String Quartet, broadcasting and performing internationally. In 2009, he joined Quartet Pro Musica as Second Violin. Keith plays on an Italian late 19th century violin made in Turin, probably by Annibale Fagnola, which is a copy of one by an earlier Turin maker, Alessandro D’Espine.

Richard Cookson studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and Conservatorium van Amsterdam under Roger Chase, Garfield Jackson and Yuko Inoue. Richard is based in London and has worked with all London’s major symphony, chamber and opera orchestras, The Nyman Band and the London Sinfonietta as well as appearing as a soloist with orchestras including Prima Vera, The European Festival Orchestra and Sinfonia 21 (which was subsequently broadcast by the BBC). He also led the orchestra of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s West End production of the Woman in White and works regularly on the session circuit appearing on soundtracks for many films. Richard plays on a viola made by Charles Boullangier, London 1882.

Myrtle Bruce-Mitford studied ‘cello with Florence Hooton and piano with Vivian Langrish at the Royal Academy of Music. During her freelance career she has worked with the major London orchestras, opera and ballet companies and in West End musicals, as well as recording sessions and television. As a chamber musician she was for several years a member of the Roussel String Trio and the Amati Piano Trio before joining Quartet Pro Musica in 2008. Myrtle also teaches, composes and is a contributor to Grove’s Dictionary. Myrtle’s cello was made by Franz Geissenhof (1753-1821), the leading Viennese maker of his day, who became known soon after his death as the “Stradivari of Vienna “.

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