Mario Lavista (b1943) is perhaps an unlikely string quartet composer: a sonic pioneer, experimenting with instrumental, orchestral and electroacoustic media as well as being a distinguished writer, teacher and lecturer. His First Quartet, Diacronía (1969), was not numbered as such originally, and in the heady days of 1960s experimentation one doubts Lavista saw it as the first of a series. The shortest, its single movement is a study in sonority where pitches are exact but rhythm and tempo are imprecise. Reflejos de la noche followed much later (1984), expanding on some of Diacronía’s concerns in a more expressively varied musical landscape. Both it and Música para mi vecino (‘Music for my neighbour’, 1995) arose from his burgeoning relationship with the members of the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, although the latter was commissioned for the Kronos. This Third Quartet explores the milieu of Machaut and Josquin in a beguilingly restrained, abstract fashion, while the Fourth, Sinfonías (1996), turned to even earlier musical forms for a rather moving essay based on quotations from his own works, including Reflejos de la noche. The impetus came from one Mrs Niles Sears for a work to accompany her soul to the afterlife. The Fifth, Siete invenciones (1998), explores this terrain further while the Sixth, Suite en cinco partes (1999), makes hay with canon and isorhythm.

The performances are exemplary, a tribute to the Cuarteto Latinoamericano’s fine musicianship and willingness to explore very different terrain to that for which they are best known on disc, the 17 quartets by Villa-Lobos. Lavista’s series may not be the greatest quartet cycle of the 20th century but it is an intriguing and thought-provoking one, and is given here in excellent performances, superbly transferred. Toccata Classics’ presentation is top-rate. Recommended.