OBITUARIES

PATRICK IRELAND

Violist Patrick Ireland, a founder member of the Allegri Quartet, died on 14 February, three months after celebrating his 100th birthday.

Born in Helston, Cornwall, Ireland started his musical life as a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral Choir School. After being trained as a bomber pilot in the war (mercifully too late to have to drop any bombs), he studied the violin at the Royal College of Music (RCM), and with Max Rostal. At the RCM, he met the pianist Peggy Gray, who invited him into her practice room to play through the Brahms D minor Violin Sonata, and they married in 1948. They had 73 years together before Peggy’s death in 2021.

In 1954 William Pleeth invited Patrick to try out with a new quartet, and Patrick agreed on condition that it was ‘just for fun’. After a second such meeting, his resistance broke down, and the Allegri Quartet was born. The other members were Pleeth, Eli Goren and James Barton (a rare left-hander who bowed with his left arm). Ayear later, Patrick was able to buy a battered but beautiful sounding Amati viola, for £300!

During the late 1950s, Patrick met Yehudi Menuhin and played with him in the Bath Festival Orchestra, which Menuhin directed. He performed Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola with Menuhin, and recorded Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no.6 with him, which has two solo violas, in 1959. Menuhin invited him to be the first viola teacher at his new Menuhin School. Among his pupils were Simon Rowland-Jones and Nicholas Logie.

Patrick left the Allegri Quartet in 1977. He then took on the position of assistant head of strings at the RNCM, but continued to play into his seventies, giving innumerable performances of string quintet repertoire as second viola with many of the best-known UK quartets, including the Lindsays, of whom his son Robin was violist.

For the latter half of his life, furniture making became an increasingly big focus. He produced maybe a hundred superb and creative pieces.

ROBIN IRELAND

IGOR OZIM

Violinist and pedagogue Igor Ozim died on 23 March at the age of 92. Among his well-known students were Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Richard Tognetti, Kurt Sassmannshaus, Rachel Kolly d’Alba and Daniel Auner.

Ozim was born in 1931 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He studied with Leon Pfeifer at the Academy of Music Ljubljana and later with Albert Sammons at London’s Royal College of Music. He continued his studies in London with Max Rostal.

Ozim received prizes at the 1951 International Carl Flesch Violin Competition and the 1953 ARD International Music Competition. As a soloist he appeared with the London Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic.

Ozim taught at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, the Hochschule der Künste in Bern, Switzerland, and the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne, Germany. He served as a jury member for the International Violin Competition Henri Marteau and the Isang Yun Competition.

AMNON WEINSTEIN

Israeli luthier Amnon Weinstein died on 5 March aged 84. The violin maker and philanthropist was the founder of the Violins of Hope Collection, which comprises stringed instruments connected with the Holocaust.

Weinstein was born on 21 July 1939 in Mandatory Palestine. His father Moshe Weinstein was a violinist and had trained as a violin maker in Warsaw in the early 20th century. Amnon apprenticed with his father and went on to study violin making in Cremona with Pietro Sgarabotto, Giuseppe Ornati and Ferdinando Garimberti. He also studied in Paris with Etienne Vatelot.

In 1982 Weinstein won a gold medal and a certificate of excellence for violin sound at Salt Lake City. He served as a judge in the violin makers competition in Salt Lake City in 1998.

During the 1980s Weinstein began to collect stringed instruments that were connected to the Holocaust, with many instruments having belonged to Jewish people before and during World War II. He established the Violins of Hope collection with his son Avshalom Weinstein, restoring the instruments to commemorate their former owners and players.

Weinstein received the 2007 Ole Bull Prize, Bergen, Norway, the Medal of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2016, the Ernst-Cramer-Medal for the Violins of Hope project, awarded to him by the Israel-German association, and the Legion of Honor in Israel in 2022.

ROGER MYERS

The Australian– US violist Roger Elgin Myers died on 25 February aged 57. He was a concert violist and professor of viola at the University of Texas at Austin, Butler School of Music.

Born in Sydney in 1966, Myers was educated at Sydney Grammar School and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He performed with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney Conservatorium Quartet, which was invited to become the international quartet-in-residence at Michigan State University. After relocating to the US he studied under Donald McInnes at the University of Southern California.

His concert career saw him collaborate with numerous artists including Lynn Harrell, Jorja Fleezanis, Daniel Heifetz, Alex Klein, Mark O’Connor, Ronald Leonard and Martin Lovett. He performed with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as principal violist with the Santa Fe Pro Musica and played with the New West Symphony Orchestra in Los Angeles as principal viola on tour with Andrea Bocelli.

Myers performed on the 1763

‘Mischakoff’ Guadagnini viola. His recording Fantasy and Farewell of works by Schumann, Shostakovich and McLean with the London Symphony Orchestra was awarded ’Best of Show’ at the 2014 Global Music Awards. He became a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London in 2014.