MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Hill: Symphonies No. 4 in C minor "The Pursuit of Happiness" & Symphony No. 6 in B flat "Celtic"

The Australian composer Alfred Francis Hill was born in Melbourne in 1870, a member of a musical family. His early experience of music was as a violinist in the kind of small orchestras employed at the time by travelling opera companies. In 1887 he went to Leipzig, where he was to spend a period of four years as a student of Gustav Schreck, taking lessons from the violinist Hans Sitt, and from the scholar Oscar Paul. The influence of Leipzig, where Hill played under Carl Reinecke in the Gewandhaus Orchestra, remained strong in his later career, as did the example of Mendelssohn, Schumann, Bruch and Hermann Götz. As a Gewandhaus Orchestra player, Hill also took part in concerts directed by Tchaikovsky and Brahms.

In 1892 Hill went to New Zealand, where he became conductor of the Wellington Choral Society, and was active as a soloist and teacher. At the same time he embarked on a series of compositions that made use of material of Maori origin, his interest in this music later being extended to include the music of Australian aboriginals and of New Guinea. Works of direct Maori inspiration include the first of his numbered symphonies, the Maori and the choral works Hinemoa, a Maori Legend and Tawhaki.

After four years in Wellington, Hill returned to Australia as a member of the ensemble directed by the Belgian violinist Ovide Musin, settling, when the ensemble was disbanded, in Sydney, where he directed concerts for the Professional Orchestral Concerts Association and the Sydney Liedertafel.