The Griller String Quartet:
Sidney Griller (violin) ; Jack O'Brien (violin) ; Philip Burton (viola) ;
Colin Hampton (violoncello) Ernest Bloch wrote only one String
Quartet, but it is one of his finest chamber music compositions. Dedicated to the Flonzaley Quartet, it was composed in 1916 at Geneva and New York, and published in 1919. The texture is of a clarity and transparency not always to be found in Bloch's music, and the four movements are admirably constructed showing great ingenuity, especially in their rhythmic variety. Changes of time signature are frequent, and cross rhythms abound. But the work is one of great beauty, and the slow movement (Pastorale) is a very delicate and imaginative piece of impressionist tone-painting with a markedly oriental flavour. The Quartet is certainly one of the finest specimens of its class and deserves to be heard more frequently. It received its first performance in New York by the Flonzaley Quartet.