Ball of Energy

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1049, 2 October 1959, Page 20

Ball of Energy

E reserve the expression "ball of energy" as a high tribute to rare spirits who engage our imagination by prodigies of sustained effort. Such a one is John Hopkins. Look through The Listener any. week: the programmes are spattered with his name. Wellington Teachers’ Choral Society in Purcellconductor, John Hopkins. A production of the New Zealand Opera Companyconductor, John Hopkins. The National Orchestra at points north, south, east, and west-conductor, John Hopkins. The Mobil Song Quest? Ye’, he is here too, The musical personality of this enormously gifted young musician has spread in two years over the whole country, And listening last Sunday afternoon to what must be accounted his greatest achievement so far-the National Youth Orchestra playing a Mozart concerto with a splendid solo-ist-one became conscious of his contribution to music in this country. The young people were astonishingly competent, rhythmically sound, tonally often more than adequate, and the excellence of Ilse von ‘Alpenheim as solo pianist reflected her confidence in the ensemble. She is a lovely Mozart player with a spaciousness of tone, a pearly elegance in rapid passages, and a feeling for Mozart style which recalled irresistibly her fellow citizen Ingrid Haebler, whose masterly accounts of the two Mozart concerti are well-known to us from records. But’ back to Mr Hopkins.. Josef Krips, one imagines, does not drop praise lightly. His large tribute to this gifted conductor must give us all the greatest satisfaction that we have so devoted and accomplished a musician working with us,