'I am one of those boys, state-educated in the Forties and Fifties, who came by the words of Hymns Ancient and Modern by singing them day in, day out in school every morning at assembly. It's a dwindling band... you con pick us out at funerals and memorial services because we can sing the hymns without the book'

To mark their 30th anniversary, the Medici Quartet asked composer George Fenton and writer Alan Bennett to collaborate on a piece for performance at the Harrogate International Festival. The result was Hymn, a meditative piece, by turns funny and
melancholy, in which Bennett looks at the part which music played in his childhood, at his father's doomed attempts to teach him the violin, and at what hymns mean to him now. The illustrative suite for strings, played by the Medici Quartet , draws on a range of musical references including Elgar, Delius and several well-known hymns. Recorded in front of an audience at the BBC Radio Theatre, Hymn is prefaced by an introduction from the author.