Alan Loveday Opens N.Z. Tour Next Week

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 722, 15 May 1953, Page 6

Alan Loveday Opens N.Z. Tour Next Week

No longer a boy, though still something of a prodigy, the violinist " Alan Loveday is back in New Zealand for the first time since leaving to study in England 13 years ago. He will give the first performance of a 10-weeks’ tour when he appears with the National Orchestra at Christchurch on Thursday, May 21. But this will not be his first performance under the baton of the National Orchestra’s guest conductor. He has played under Warwick Braithwaite before, with the London Symphony, the Scottish, and the BBC Symphony Orchestras. The young violinist’s tour will include five performances with the orchestra, and 27 recitals with his wife, Ruth Stanfield, as accompanist and associate artist. With the orchestra he will appear in the four main centres and in his former home town, Palmerston North. The solo recitals will be in the four centres and in Oamaru. Invercargill, Rotorua, Hastings, Gisborne, Timaru, Blenheim. Hawera, Wanganui, Whangarei, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Tauranga, Napier, Nelson, Greymouth, Ashburton, Masterton, New Plymouth and Te Kuiti. Alan Loveday began playing the violin’ at the age of three. When he was nine he was auditioned by the visiting Budapest String Quartet, whose members were. so impressed they gave him) a benefit performance and opened the fund which enabled him to study overseas. In England, Alan studied under Albert Sammons, first privately, then at the Royal College of Music. His first | important public appearance was in 1946, when he was aged 18. Since then he has fulfilled many concert and broadcasting engagements, playing under such noted conductors as Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir John Barbirolli, Dr. Reginald Jacques and Warwick Braithwaite. The last-named considers him one of Britain’s leading violinists, and an artist now approaching the height of his powers. With the National Orchestra, Alan Loveday is to play Tchaikovski’s Concerto in D, Opus 35 (Christchurch and Palmerston North), Mozart’s Concerto in A Major, No. 5 (Dunedin), three movements of Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole (Auckland), and Khachaturian’s Concerto (Wellington).