I'm not quite sure what cover design I'd have chosen for this collection. A Raphael drawing, to suggest the conservatism but also the singing line and the masterly contrapuntal working of Rubbra's quartet? A Klee, maybe, to hint at Peter Wishart's resource in building from tiny motives? For Phyllis Tate's only apparently inconsequential side-steppings, at times into deep emotional waters, I can't at the moment think of a visual analogue. But anything would be better than the booklet design for this CD (no, I exaggerate: brown paper and ''English String Quartets of the Fifties'' in typescript would I suppose have been marginally more off-putting). An austere, monochrome stylization of strings and a bow, plus ''String Quartets'' in tasteful script quite overwhelm the composers' names, apologetically hidden in the bottom margin.
For this is a collection of some importance. Had I not made a solemn vow not to use the word 'masterpiece' more than once a year I might be tempted to apply it to the Rubbra, to its first and third movements at least, those in which he most overtly evokes Beethoven but also most demonstrates his own individuality. Those put off not by the cover design but by my reference to ''masterly contrapuntal working'' should be assured that two of Rubbra's other characteristics, at least as important, are a lyrical fantasy that adds grace to the sobriety of his first allegro, and a noble melodic breadth that makes the slow Cavatina resonate in the memory for days. Wishart's piece is not of this stature, but it is 'well-made' in the good rather than the patronizing sense of that word; its craftsmanship is satisfying, not arid.
If Phyllis Tate had used opus numbers (she didn't; because, she said, her habit of throwing manuscripts in the dustbin when she was dissatisfied with them would have led to mysterious gaps in her catalogue), her quartet would be Op. 4, or thereabouts. Her very best and most accomplished works come mostly from a little later, but the second movement of this piece, in which a wistful tune and a fragment of ostinato suggest a lyrical intermezzo but are then built to music of considerable power and intensity, and the third, which similarly hints (it is marked grazioso) at a quite gentle, English ('feminine', even?) scherzo, before launching with great vigour into music of Shostakovich-like ferocity, are characteristic and very welcome to a catalogue in which she is represented at present only by a single folk-song setting. The performances of all three works are first-rate, the recording exemplary.
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