Work

Programme Note

The first performance was given on the 27th November 1983 by the Amabile String Quartet (Alan Foster, Glenda Craven, Lyndsay Mountfort, Annemarie Meijers), the players all being members of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. The ‘String Quartet No.1’ was also performed at the National Art Gallery, Wellington in 1983, and at the University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ in 1986. ‘String Quartet No.1’ is a concise work written in an atonal and at times modernist language somewhat inspired by the music of Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg. The second movement is a kind of “Second Viennese waltz” – a reference to the Second Viennese School at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Commissioned:

Commissioned by the Dowse Art Gallery, Lower Hutt, for its 1983 Concert Series of NZ music.

Difficulty:

Advanced

Influences:

• Modernism