ORCHESTRAL CLOSE-UP—1

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 897, 12 October 1956, Page 21

ORCHESTRAL CLOSE-UP—1

M ALCOLM LATCHEM, who is in the first desk of violins of the National Orchestra, came to New Zealand early this year and joined the Orchestra soon after he arrived. Born in Salisbury, England, in 1931, he began playing the violin when he was still very young and had hig first orchestral experience as player, and later as soloist, with the school orchestra. When still at college he started a string quartet and it’s with smaller string groups that his main interest lies. : In 1947 Mr. Latchem won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, London, studied under Albert Sammons, and later with Sacha Lasserson and, in Belgium, with Arthur Grumiaux. His studies interrupted by National Service, he joined the Band of the Life Guards and played in their orchestral group. Sometimes this would be for a State dinner at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, or at another time providing incidental music while the Queen and other members of the Royal family played Canasta. Back in college he gained more experience in concerto playing, adding the’ Bartok, Delius and Mendelssohn concertos to his repertoire. One year he won the Howard prize, the chief prize at the college for violin playing. When Malcolm Latchem left College in 1953 he free-lanced for a time with some of the numerous:string groups and orchestras which started in London after the war. Many of these groups have no conductors-an old custom that is again

becoming established. "This is the way music seems to be going," he told us. After a_ short tour of some German towns as leader of a student orchestra, he joined the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for a_ year, playing with them at Glyndebourne and Edinburgh. This period he describes as being "very hard work." Malcolm Latchem had not been in this country very long before he set about forming a chamber group, and a few weeks ago his string quartet gave. its first series of broadcasts and a success- , ful first public concert. The other members of the quartet are all in the National Orchestra and so far their programmes have been mainly of modern works. When asked what composers he liked best he said that as he was interested in the smaller chamber groups it was naturally music written for these that con-

cerned him. "In the main this happens to be the older music and, at the other end of the scale, contemporary music," he said. Malcolm Latchem will play his first concerto with the Orchestra on Tuesday, _October 16 (YC’s, 9.15 p.m.) This will be Prokofieff’s seldom-played but very fine second Violin Concerto, a

written in 1935 soon after the composer had returned to Russia. To meet this young violinist is modest and quiet, and when playing he has an air of complete absorption in the music. His violin, he tells us, is a Pressenda, made by one of the famous Italian violin-makers of the last century. —