[citation needed] With Herbert Downes he played Bach's Concerto for Two Violins in D minor at the Students' Twenty-Eighth Annual Orchestral and Vocal Concert in Birmingham Town Hall on Wednesday 12 June 1929.
[citation needed] For nine years he was a member of the Philharmonia String Quartet with Henry Holst, Herbert Downes and Anthony Pini.
The Quartet recorded, travelled frequently and were the first musicians to venture behind the Iron Curtain after the war, playing in the British Embassy in Prague in 1947.
When Boult was invited to go to London to found the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1930, the new man at the helm of the CBO, Leslie Heward, promoted Ernest to Deputy Leader, to sit alongside Paul Beard.
[citation needed] He was a chamber music player of international status, playing with such artists as Schnabel, Szigetti, Pierre Fournier and William Primrose and deputising for the Amadeus.
[citation needed] In 1947 he assembled as part of a group to perform in England and on the continent with violinist Joseph Szigeti, cellist Pierre Fournier, violist William Primrose and bassist James Merrett.
Ernest had a close association with composer Robert Simpson, whose First Violin Concerto was dedicated to him and which he premièred in Birmingham Town Hall in 1960.