Quarter-Size Violinist

Violinist Diana Halprin last week got a break a lot of musicians wait a lifetime for --and it came at age six. She was engaged to play as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Picked from a field of 17 aspiring moppets, aged six to twelve, Diana will perform at a concert for children next season--the youngest violinist ever to play with the orchestra.

Father Orcka Halprin, onetime violinist with the Detroit Symphony, got the idea his daughter might be a prodigy when he heard her picking out radio tunes on a toy piano at the age of two. He tested her further, discovered she had absolute pitch.* Also, "she was really born with a fiddle hand," broad and dexterous. At three, Diana got her first violin, a four-ounce affair, one-eighth adult size, and began taking lessons from her father.

When the Halprins moved to Philadelphia last year, Diana enrolled in the Curtis Institute, traded her violin for a quarter-sized one. Her practice sessions are frequent but seldom last more than 20 minutes. Games are invented to keep her interest, e.g., Diana shows her dolls the correct way to play, then plays for them herself. For next season's concert, Diana hopes to be able to handle a half-size violin, perform a movement from a Mozart or Mendelssohn concerto.

Diana is enthusiastic about her concert career, admits that her real reason for pursuing it is "so I can get lots and lots of flowers." She still enjoys listening to the radio, but is more discerning of late. Nowadays, when anyone hits a sour note, "I run out of the room. It happens a lot."

* The ability, uncommon even in musicians, to identify any isolated musical tone without reference to some previously sounded note.

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