String Quartet No. 4, in A minor played by the Hirsch String Quartet:
Leonard Hirsch (violin) Patrick Halling (violin) Stephen Shingles (viola) Francisco Gabarro (cello)
(first broadcast performance)
This work, written in 1950, is dedicated to the Hirsch String Quartet, who commissioned it and gave the first complete performance of it in London last May. The slow movement is based on the last of ' Three Wordsworth Songs ' (' It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ') which the composer wrote two years ago in celebration of the centenary of his name-sake and ancestor. The quartet has four movements: Andante -Allegro; Allegro molto; Poco adagio e molto tranquillo; and Allegro con brio. H.R.