(From Birmingham)
IVOR JAMES ( Violoncello) DAVID MCCALLUM (Violin) MILDRED DILLING (Harp)
KREISLER'S career has been in many ways an astonishing one. He was only reven when he made his first concert appearance, and in the same year entered the Vienna Conservatoire, in spite of the rule that pupils must bo at least fourteen years old on admission. He was the youngest pupil who ever studied there, and certainly the youngest who ever won the Gold Medal for violin playing. He was then only ten. Two years later he achieved another amazing success, by winning the first Prix de Rome of the Paris Conservatoire, in competition with forty others, not one of whom was less than twenty years of age. After some successful concert tours in Europe and America, he came back to Vienna and gave up music altogether for a time. He took a course in Medicine, studied painting both in Paris and in Rome, and finally became a cavalry officer. During his army service, he laid his violin entirely aside, developing, no doubt, that splendid physique which enables him to withstand so well the arduous life of a virtuoso. Taking up his music once more, he soon made himself one of the foremost concert players in the world, and though his career was again interrupted by army service, during the War, when he was wounded, he is still, probably the most popular solo violinist of today ; he is certainly one of the most brilliant.