TALENTED Hannah Roper pitched herself against more than 600 applicants from all around the world for a place at a prestigious music school - and struck the right note.

At 10, Hannah, from Tarrington, is one of Britain's brightest musical hopes. In September she's off to the internationally renowned Yehudi Menuhin School to study the violin.

Hannah was only two when transfixed by a cellist on TV. Too young to take up the cello she "downsized" to the violin aged four and soon proved a natural.

A year on she saw a soloist in concert and said that was what she wanted to be.

By seven Hannah was working her way through qualification grades with distinction, her skills honed by the Suzuki school in Malvern. She was good enough to get places in the National Children's Orchestra and National Chamber Youth Orchestra.

The Menuhin School was Hannah's toughest test, a stringent series of auditions -- one of which lasted four days - with 632 applicants after only three places.

This week Hannah, a music scholarship student at Hereford Cathedral Junior School, heard she had won through.

Backed by an education grant, she will study and board at the Menuhin School, in Surrey, until she is 18.

Mum Frances says Hannah is "unaffected" by her success so far, as happy to play solo for a packed Birmingham Cathedral as she was busking on the streets of Dublin, which she did while on holiday in Eire recently.

The trip was a chance for Hannah to indulge her love of Irish folk music, with a little jazz thrown into the mix.

And she has more than one string to her bow, proving proficient with the viola and piano.

Music runs in the family. Frances is librarian to the Three Choirs Festivals and enjoys choral singing. But she says that Hannah gets her gift from her granddad.

Cyril King had a revue band in the Swing era, playing saxophone and writing his own music. He, too, was handy with the violin.

Hannah's seven-year-old sister Rachel plays as well having taken up - the cello.