With each recording of York Bowen’s chamber music, it becomes clear just how accomplished a composer he was. The two string quartets featured here, the Second of c1918 and the Third of 1919, together with the rather later Phantasy Quintet of 1932, demonstrate that his chamber output was not technically biased towards works with piano, the instrument on which he himself excelled. Both quartets favour a three-movement plan and the formal models are essentially classical. Nevertheless, within these clean-cut frameworks, the thematic and harmonic world is a passionately romantic one, full of nostalgia and inner melancholy, aspects of the music not lost on the Archaeus Quartet, whose full tone brings life to these neglected and technically challenging scores.

The fine Second Quartet in D minor, Op 41, a Carnegie Award-winner in 1922, presents its own difficulties in the high lines for cello and viola in the slow movement, and in the rapid moto perpetuo passages in the finale. The Third Quartet in G major, Op 46b is, by contrast, lighter and more intimate, with an especially attractive finale. Most remarkable is the Phantasy Quintet for bass clarinet and string quartet, a combination which lends an almost Gothic darkness to the work’s sound world. Rich in melodic invention, this terse, vivid yet haunting canvas of only 14 minutes, beautifully written for the ensemble (with some spirited playing from the bass clarinettist Timothy Lines), is a real find and deserves to be better known.