The Alex Cohen Quarter and Victor Hely-Hutchinson (pianoforte)
All Elgar's chamber music, the Violin Sonata, the Quintet, and the Quartet, were written in a Sussex village in the year 1918 and 1919, so that there is a clear assumption that a compelling reaction from the horrors of the preceding years was responsible more than any other cause for their quiet autumnal beauty. They were first heard when the War had ceased.
Each is constructed much on the same plan. There are three movements, no Scherzo; and the slow movement is in each work the jewel within the setting, a movement of rare beauty. Thus in the Violin Sonata, it is the Romance that lingers longest in the memory. The whole is, however, a piece of lovely writing.
