THE PHILHARMONIC PIANO QUARTET:
CHARLES KELLY (Pianoforte) ; PAUL BEARD (Violin) ; FRANK VENTON (Viola) ; JOHAN C. HocK (Violoncello)
DOROTHY NEVILLE-WHITE (Mezzo-Soprano)
PAUL BEARD, JOHAN C. HOCK and CHARLES KELLY
GABRIEL FAURE was an eminent French composer and teacher who died a couple of years ago, at the age of seventy-nine. Among his best work (certainly his most distinctive, characteristically French, music) may be included his songs, of which ho wrote very many. His First Quartet for Piano, Violin, Viola, and 'Cello is in the customary four distinct Movements, the first two of which are played to-night.
NARRATIVE POETRY by Brat Harte, read by RICHARD CLOUDESLEY SAVAGE
COMPOSERS do not very often rearrange their own works for different instruments than those for which the music was conceived. Yet the Quartet of Beethoven that we are going to hear was originally written for Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn and Piano. Probabiv Beethoven thought it would be likely to be frequently performed if he arranged it for the more common instruments, Violin, Viola, 'Cello, and Piano. On those instruments we are to hear it to-night.
BRAHMS concludes his first Piano Quartet (which he wrote when he was thirty, just after he had gone to live in Vienna) with a Movement which ho describes as 'alia Zingarese' - that is, in the style of the gypsy music that was commonly to be heard in Hungary at that time. His interest in this variety of folk-music had been aroused ten years before. Engagements were not very numerous then. and the young composer was glad to go on a concert tour with the violinist, Rempnyi, playing his accompaniments. Remenyi was partly of tho Hungarian extraction, and included some of that country's folk-tunes in his programmes. Brahms was much attracted by these airs, and made arrangements of some of them. Later, he more than once used the rhythms and melodic peculiarities of the Hungarian folk-songs and dances in his orchestral works; for instance, in the last Movement of his Violin Concerto, and in the Quartet Movement now played.
