Bernard Stevens belonged to the same generation as Britten, but he became a Communist, which brought him into contact with Alan Bush and gave them both some trouble with the establishment. Stevens read music at Cambridge then studied under RO Morris and Gordon Jacob at the RCM, where he later became a professor who was much valued by students and colleagues.

The Violin Sonata so impressed Max Rostal when a student took it to him in 1940 that he commissioned the Violin Concerto, recorded in a stunning performance by Ernst Kovacic (4/90). That student became Stevens’ wife Bertha, whose activities since her husband’s death in 1983 have kept his music alive. In 1989 she edited Bernard Stevens and his Music: a Symposium (Kahn & Averill), with an impressive list of contributors.

The music itself is invariably well crafted – the early influences of Bloch were productive and Stevens also admired Busoni. In some ways he emerges as a kind of British Shostakovich, living a less tortured existence, but somehow the personality which makes a Berkeley or a Rawsthorne immediately identifiable is missing. This could come with knowing the music better: it is obviously rewarding to play, as the high quality of these performances clearly shows.

The most substantial pieces are the remarkably mature Violin and Piano Sonata, his Op 1, and the Piano Trio, both from the war years when Stevens was in the army. There’s little change when we come to the Horn Trio from the mid 1960s. By then Stevens had found his language; it was far from fashionable but, like Robert Simpson, he simply stuck to his guns. These chamber pieces fill a gap even if they lack the impact of the works on a larger scale.