Dutton Laboratories continues its valuable championship of Edmund Rubbra with this first instalment in a new cycle of his four masterly string quartets. Completed in 1951‚ the Second Quartet is a marvellously inventive piece‚ beautifully scored for the medium‚ unfailingly purposeful and full of beguilingly subtle rhythmic and harmonic resource. Bearing a dedication to Robert Simpson‚ the two­movement Fourth Quartet of 1975­77 was one of Rubbra’s last major works. Probing and intensely poignant‚ it’s another hugely eloquent‚ seamlessly evolving affair which repays repeated hearings; indeed‚ the patient listener will derive profound long­term rewards from both works. The Dante Quartet prove outstandingly sympathetic protagonists of Rubbra’s noble inspiration‚ their playing rather more urgently expressive and tonally ingratiating than that of the Sterling Quartet (whose useful complete cycle on Conifer Classics – 5/96 – has now been deleted). Pianist Michael Dussek joins proceedings for a stylish and delectably unforced account of the Lyric Movement of 1929‚ an expertly wrought essay for piano quintet which itself grew out of an earlier‚ discarded string quartet. Likewise‚ the searching and pithy Meditations on a Byzantine Hymn for two violas from 1962 (originally conceived as a solo piece and later alternatively reworked) is in the safe hands of Judith Busbridge and Krysia Osostowicz (the latter as deft on the viola as she is on the violin). Tony Faulkner’s Maltings sound is excellent on the whole‚ if just a fraction too closely balanced for my own tastes (I’d have preferred a little more in the way of acoustic bloom). No matter‚ a very positive recommendation; indeed‚ I’m already eagerly awaiting the next volume (containing Quartets Nos 1 and 3).