'Richard Jefferies and his friends '
Recalled by REGINALD ARKELL
On November 6, 1848, Richard Jefferies was born at Coate Farm, near Swindon, in the County of Wiltshire. He learnt to write in the hard school of provincial journalism and learnt his job well. His keen observation of detail and his poetic imagination have given to his works a charm which does not date. He can take his place beside Hudson as one of the foremost writers on nature. As a youth, he preferred to find his friends among the less reputable members of Countryside Society. Oby the poacher, Luke the rabbit contractor, the Moucher, and, on the other side of the picture, Keeper Haylock. These men taught him to know intimately the nature that he loved instinctively and his early works in particular reflect very vividly country life in the late 'seventies when such tremendous emphasis was laid upon the preservation of game.
(An article on Richard Jefferies will be found on page 12)

from the National Museum of Wales
(Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre)
FRANK THOMAS (violin), NINA ROCHARD (viola), RONALD HARDING (violoncello), HILARY EVANS (flute), MARY KENDALL (pianoforte), MABEL DRAPER (pianoforte) The G minor Piano Quartet was written when Brahms was thirty years of age at the time when he first went to Vienna. The work as a whole is in Brahms's most characteristic style, particularly the first movement. The last movement shows the influence upon Brahms of gypsy music -the movement is actually alla Zingarese, which means in the gypsy style'. Apart from this movement and such expressly Hungarian works as the Variations on a Hungarian Theme for piano, the Hungarian Dances, and the ' Zigeunerlieder ', we find occasional piano pieces and odd movements of chamber works strongly flavoured with the gypsy idiom: the B minor Capriccio for piano, the finale of the G major String Quintet, and the slow movement of the Clarinet Quintet, to mention only a few examples.