If I might indulge myself for a moment, I remember the first time I encountered Stanford’s First String Quintet – by playing it with friends. Two decades ago, there was no other way to hear it: so it’s worth reiterating just what a debt of gratitude lovers of British music owe to Somm and the Dante Quartet for their commitment to Stanford’s chamber music. Listening to this vibrant new recording, what struck me was exactly what struck me as a player: the freshness, the spontaneity, the instinctive ‘rightness’ of Stanford’s writing for strings. This might be the most satisfying body of work in this genre by any British composer before Frank Bridge.

The spirit of Brahms is never far from either the First Quintet or the C minor Second – recorded here for the first time, in an edition prepared by Jeremy Dibble, whose authoritative booklet essays have been one of the glories of this series. That’s unsurprising, given that both works were intended for Joseph Joachim. But Stanford brings something else to the table – a clarity, a virtuosity and a brilliant but essentially lyrical spirit that owes something to Mendelssohn, as well as his own Irish roots.

So there’s an operatic sense of drama in the finale of the First Quintet, and a sweeping, almost symphonic emotional range in the Second. If the combined Dante and Endellion players don’t quite convince as a unit in the First Quintet, leader Krysia Osostowicz is frequently thrilling, and by the Second, with its deep, melancholy nocturne of an Andante, they’re wholly inside this sincere and strikingly passionate score. Cellist Richard Jenkinson and pianist Benjamin Frith play the Schumannesque Three Intermezzi with unaffected warmth; a lovely bonus on a highly rewarding album.