Pulling all the right strings

His recitals are much too rare these days, but National Artist ML Usni Pramoj will be back on stage again this Sunday at the Four Seasons Hotel. The Privy Councillor will be showing his talents on the viola in a concert by the Pro Musica Quartet, which he co-founded in the late 1950s.
For Sunday’s show, which is presented by Silpakorn University’s Faculty of Music and sponsored by Globex Corporation, ML Usni will be joined by three young up-and-coming musicians.
“I do not exactly remember when we first formed the quartet but it must have been in the late ’50s or early ’60s. We played mainly for our own pleasure, but as we got better as a group, we began to perform in public,” he recalls.
An accomplished viola player, conductor and composer, ML Usni was responsible for bringing high-quality Western classic music to the Kingdom.
“The original members of the quartet were Imdad Hussain, third secretary of the Pakistani Embassy in Bangkok, and a friend of mine from Oxford, on first violin, myself on second violin, Gosch, a German businessman whose first name we never used, on viola, and cellist Kamtorn Snidvongse who came up with the name Pro Musica.
“We rehearsed on Tuesday evenings at Kamtorn’s house, played lots of Haydn, some Mozart and early Beethoven. In those days, the audience for string quartet music was even smaller than today, but I believe that we started something of value,” he says.
“Imdad was a very capable violinist and eventually left his diplomatic career to become a full-time professional musician, going on to play with the New York Philharmonic. With the departure of Imdad, the original quartet broke up. Gosch declared he had reached a peak that he would never surpass and gave up playing altogether.
“Kamtorn and I were not ready to call it quits. We recruited more musicians and formed the Pro Musica Orchestra which, with much help from the Goethe Institute, continued for many more years until it became the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra.”
“I then took a 10-year ‘sabbatical’ and went scuba diving before returning to music. Spending time underwater was quite refreshing,” ML Usni says.
The re-formed Pro Musica Orchestra, led by the distinguished and much respected Thai violinist Tasana Nagavajara, undertook a very successful tour of western Europe last year, performing in the UK, Belgium, Holland and Germany.
For Sunday’s concert the Quartet – Tasana Nagavajara on first violin, Siripong Tiptan on second violin, ML Usni Pramoj on viola and Kittikhun Sodprasert on cello – will be joined by Pongsathorn Suraphap on double bass.
The programme features Antonin Dvorak’s String Quintet Opus 77 and rarely performed work by Gioachino Rossini, his Sonata for Strings in G major.
“At our last chamber music concert, the encore piece was “Over the Rainbow”, a golden oldie that the audience seemed to enjoy. We have therefore decided, since this time we have a double bass, to include a few more golden oldies,” he says.

TUNED UP
The Pro Musica Quartet performs at 5pm on Sunday at the Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok. Tickets cost Bt500 (Bt100 for students). For reservations, e-mail [email protected].