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Lauri Kennedy


Lauri Kennedy (5 July 1896 – 26 April 1985) was a notable Australian cellist.

Irvine Robert Laurie Kennedy (he used Laurie, later dropping the final 'e') was born in Randwick, a suburb of Sydney, to an English-born father and native-born mother. He studied with Herbert Walenn at the Royal College of Music, London, and Paul Brummer in Vienna. Dame Nellie Melba noticed him and encouraged him to undertake further studies in the United States.

He made his mark in the US in the 1920s, where he became principal cellist with the New York Philharmonic at the personal invitation of Arturo Toscanini. He played chamber music with performers such as Arthur Rubinstein and Jascha Heifetz. In the United Kingdom he played in a noted piano quartet called the Chamber Music Players with Albert Sammons, Lionel Tertis and William Murdoch. He also appeared with the tenor John McCormack for a number of years, and appears on record accompanying McCormack.

He became principal cellist with Sir Adrian Boult's BBC Symphony Orchestra at its inception in 1929 and played with them until 1935. It has been stated that his cello can be heard in the slow movement of Boult’s 1935 recording of the Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto with Artur Schnabel. However, Kennedy himself said that, while it was planned that he should play the cello solo, by the time the recording was actually made (Nov. 1935), he had left the BBCSO, and that it was Ambrose Gauntlett whose cello playing is recorded with Schnabel. He recorded music with Fritz Kreisler and William Primrose, including Kreisler’s String Quartet in A minor in 1935 with members of the London String Quartet. He recorded Edgar Bainton’s Cello Sonata. After Felix Salmond and Guilhermina Suggia turned it down, Lauri Kennedy was engaged to premiere Frank Bridge’s Oration for cello and orchestra, but withdrew during rehearsals. He also became a professor at the Royal College of Music.


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