Australia has lost one of its most eminent grand-masters of music with the passing of violinist, conductor and teacher Carl Anthony Pini on 17 October 2021 in Sydney. Pini shaped Australian musical life essentially through his long-term leadership of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney String Quartet, the Carl Pini Quartet and more recently through his direction of the Riverina Summer School for Strings and his generous mentorship of the Kendall National Violin Competition.

Carl Pini

Carl Pini. Image supplied.

A superbly authoritative soloist, conductor, leader of major orchestras and internationally successful string quartets and as a teacher at the Royal College in London, the Sydney Conservatorium, Canterbury University in Christchurch and the University of Melbourne, Carl Pini (‘Tony’) influenced the life of generations of Australian musicians and embodied the existence of the musician as leader, listener, human being and virtuoso – a person of accomplishment and playful ease in the face of immensurable challenge.

Carl Pini was born in 1934 in London, the son of Barbara Ensor, a fine violinist and student of the eminent Achille Rivarde, and Anthony Pini, one of Britain’s...