QUARTET PRACTISES FOR SIX HOURS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31086, 15 June 1966, Page 18

QUARTET PRACTISES FOR SIX HOURS

After a separation of almost a week, the members of the Juillard quartet spent more than six hours practising together yesterday. Although this left little time for relaxing with their families, the ritual of hard work and travel has become routine for the four men.

“We do as much practice together as we can, and even then we feel we could have done more,” the first violinist, Mr Robert Mann, said yesterday. “It takes at least three hours a day together to get our old repertoire into shape,

and to prepare new pieces.”

All the members of the quartet are teachers at the Julliard School of Music in New York, where they spend most of the year teaching and playing chamber music. The school, which was established more than 50 years ago, provides tuition for high school graduates in every musical instrument, as well as voice, opera, and dance training. More than 700 students attend.

Robert Mann and Raphael Hillyer have been with the group since 1946; Claus Adam, who plays the ’cello, joined in 1955 and the second violinist, Earl Carlyss, a newcomer to the group, joined in the current season.

The group all teach for about 25 weeks of the year at the school, and the rest of the time is devoted to concerts within the United States and overseas. The members perform about 150 concerts a year.

“Chamber music has become increasingly popular in the last 15 years,” Mr Hillyer said. “We get quite large audiences to the 100 or so concerts we do in the States, and we are only one of the quartets performing during the season.” Three of the group are married, but as their wives are lovers of chamber music, they find that this causes little complication in their work. Their families travel with them on tour.

Tonight the group will perform their first concert of the New Zealand tour at the Civic Theatre.