QUARTET BY ALFRED HILL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 331, 26 October 1945, Page 15

QUARTET BY ALFRED HILL

Alfred Hill (below) was recently recorded in Australia by the Queensland State Quartet, and while the players were in Sydney a gathering assembled to meet them and Mr. Hill, and to hear a programme of chamber: music. The occasion was mentioned by Neville Cagdus, music critic to the Sydney Morning Herald. In the first place, it seemed that such a thing as a perfofmance by a string quartet was a novelty: "Last. night in the Conservatorium a large audience enjoyed the rare privilege in Sydney. of listening to a chamber quartet, thanks to four players who are subsidised by the State Government of Queensland. Something of the same eccentric idealism may be emulated, or at least talked ‘about, in New" South Wales one of these fine days. jak Mr. Cardus . desctibed the performances of a quartet by Haydn, one by Beethoven, and one by Arnold Bax, and then went on: "But the most musical and heartfelt interpretation of the concert came in the last work of the programme, played as an addition by request-a quartet by Alfred Hill (the 11th of 17 which he has written). "This composition was new to me, and I have lived in this country more than \ STRING quartet composed by

five years at a stretch and have heard much Australian music of little sensibility and less art. This quartet by Alfred Hill is beautiful in warm melody, with sympathetic writing for each instrument; it is cultured music of a full and refined sensibility. The Continental influences. are of no more account than those which were assimilated by, say, Elgar. Alfred Hill writes easefully and from his heart and from a true culture. Young bloods of to-day may not be interested in- such a work, because it avoids wilful dissonance and is perfectly honest."