Although William Alwyn’s extensive catalogue includes three ‘official’ string quartets dating from 1953, 1975 and 1984, his relationship with the genre stretches all the way back to 1920 when, as a 15-year-old, he wrote a String Quartet in B minor. By 1936 he had completed no fewer than 13 specimens; all were subsequently withdrawn by the fastidious composer.

Interestingly, Alwyn’s distinguished composition teacher at the Royal Academy of Music, Sir John Blackwood McEwen (1868-1948), himself penned an invigorating chain of 16 string quartets, and in Alwyn’s Tenth from 1932 (entitled En voyage) I detect an appreciative nod towards McEwen’s bracing Sixth String Quartet (Biscay). Written while on a nine-month tour of Australia as an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, and inspired in part by John Masefield’s 1902 anthology Salt Water Poems and Ballads, this is a richly enjoyable piece, its two finely sustained slow movements (‘Departure’ and ‘The lonely waters’) forming a lively contrast with two strongly appealing quicker ones (‘Sea birds’ and ‘Trade winds’).

Rather more of a personal voice shines through in the Eleventh (1933), and its tenderly expressive Moderato e quieto finale in particular, while the one-movement Twelfth (composed in July 1935 and inscribed to Alan Bush) is entirely different again in its gritty intensity and frequently daring harmonic scope. Written in 1936 but not heard until the autumn of 2015 when it was premiered by the Cavaleri Quartet (at a concert in Blythburgh, Suffolk, as part of that year’s William Alwyn Festival), the by turns meaty and capricious Thirteenth comprises just two movements, the brooding first of which Alwyn promptly orchestrated for two horns, timpani and strings, and renamed Tragic Interlude.

Really excellent playing from the Tippett Quartet throughout, vividly captured by Paul Arden-Taylor’s microphones in the sympathetic surroundings of St Nicholas Parish Church in Thames Ditton. For Alwyn acolytes this fascinating issue constitutes essential listening.