Recordings of Vaughan Williams’s two numbered string quartets have never been exactly thick on the ground, so a hearty welcome to these superbly accomplished – and excellently engineered – performances. Displaying both consummate technical skill and keen conviction, the Tippett Quartet prove especially persuasive champions of the Second Quartet, written between 1942 and 1944. Designed as a birthday gift for Jean Stewart (viola player of the Menges Quartet), it features some strikingly imaginative and frequently challenging writing for that instrument, not least in the bracing Prelude (marked Allegro appassionato) and driven Scherzo (which uses material from the 1940 film score for Michael Powell’s 49th Parallel). Elsewhere, the raptly songful Epilogue irresistibly calls to mind the serene culmination of the Fifth Symphony, though arguably the most telling inspiration is to be found in the meditative Romance, which is underpinned by a sorrowful intensity.

Completed in 1908 shortly after RVW’s period of study with Ravel, the G minor Quartet likewise enjoys tremendously compelling advocacy. In the closing bars of the lucidly wrought opening movement there are already reminders that the great Tallis Fantasia was not far off. The ensuing Minuet and Trio finds the composer engagingly incorporating elements of folk song into his own distinctive style, while the slow-movement Romance brings yet more wonderfully touching invention (and it’s perhaps here where any French flavour is at its most discernible). The concluding Rondo capriccioso is a dashing delight, its giddily exuberant, hell-for-leather presto coda thrillingly dispatched.

We’re also treated to the compact Phantasy on British Folk Songs by RVW’s dear friend, Gustav Holst. Entered for the 1916 Cobbett Competition, it was subsequently withdrawn by its creator, who referred to it as his ‘guilty secret’; the composer’s daughter, Imogen, thought more highly of it, even masterminding a version for string orchestra. Once more, the Tippett Quartet do full justice to this attractive find, which is the icing on the cake of a truly irresistible offering.