May Busby (soprano)
The Brosa String Quartet :]
Antonio Brosa (violin)
Norman Chappie (violin)
Leonard Rubens (viola)
Livio Mannucci (violoncello)
Beethoven's Quartet in F minor, Op. 95, was written in 1810 when the composer was forty years of age. It is an interesting work, as it sums up the chief characteristics of Beethoven's middle period-so finely set forth in the three Op. 59 quartets-and at the same time foreshadows his third period which brought forth those magnificent last five quartets.
The manuscript of the Quartet
(which is in the usual four movements) bears the inscription ' Quartetto serioso-1810-in the month of October. Dedicated to Herr von
Zmeskall and written in the month of October by his friend, L. v. Beethoven.'
The word 'serious' does not perhaps fully describe the work, which is full of impassioned expression.
Elizabeth Maconchy , who is as yet only in her twenties, is Irish by birth. She studied at the Royal College of Music, where she was a scholar, and later went abroad-to Prague and elsewhere - with a travelling scholarship. In 1930 her Piano Concerto was given by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, and in the same year her Suite, ' The Land ', was introduced by Sir Henry Wood at the Proms.
In 1933 her Oboe Quintet won a prize in the Daily Telegraph Competition for Chamber Music, and was subsequently broadcast. Her other chamber works include two string quartets, the second of which will be heard this afternoon.
Italian Serenade Wolf
The Italian Serenade is, with the exception of a very early quartet for strings, the only chamber music work written by Hugo Wolf , who was pre-eminently a song-writer. The Serenade has been transcribed for small orchestra. It was first performed as a quartet in Vienna in 1904, the year following Wolf's death, and quickly became popular with chamber music players.