Alfred Hill - String Quartets Vol 2

Herald rating: * * * *

Verdict: A striking second instalment of our chamber music history.
Donald Maurice's programme note for the Dominion Quartet's second volume of Alfred Hill's String Quartets incorporates a roll-call of names whose influence can be felt on the man known as New Zealand's first professional composer.

We are told to listen for touches reminiscent of Elgar, writing that is Schubertian one moment and Haydnesque the next as well as scale-like motives not unlike Grieg. In the last Quartet of the set, shades of Tchaikovsky and Ravel hover over a score that features "British sounding sonata form", whatever that may be.

For all the flagrant echoes of a European past, Alfred Hill (1869-1960) is part of our Antipodean heritage.

There is a pioneering spirit at work in this Naxos project to record all 17 of his Quartets and these Wellington string players are clearly proud to be part of it.

The 1916 Fourth Quartet is at its most adventurous in its second movement.

Violist Maurice introduces the first theme tenderly, although one senses Hill is striving for a big tune that never quite comes.

A student-exercise Scherzo is cosy and predictable while its Finale, despite an "Allegro con spirito" marking, too often takes a cautious canter in Mendelssohn country.

Eleven years later, the Sixth Quartet, titled The Kids, was intended for Hill's music students at the New South Wales Conservatorium. Working within self-imposed limitations, both technically and musically, the composer achieves some minor miracles, especially in the harmonic quicksand of the work's first 13 bars. Only the stony-hearted could not be swept away by its rollicking Scherzo.

The 1934 Eighth Quartet is made of sterner stuff.

Both its harmonic language and its structural ingenuities create a sense of questing and inspire some of the finest playing on the disc, showcased in Wayne Laird's exemplary production.

Later in his life, Alfred Hill would seek refuge in his orchards in the Blue Mountains. "Gardening is a rest for the eyes," he would say, "but composing music rests the weary body.

- William Dart