Founded in 2003, the Barbirolli Quartet brings together four string players trained at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester – explaining why they took the name of the much-loved chief conductor of the Hallé Orchestra. Since then they have built a formidable reputation both as a superbly coordinated ensemble and for taking on adventurous repertory, winning many awards. This well recorded disc bears witness to their achievement in the concentration of all the performances.

It is fascinating to compare the two main works offered, not just Bliss’s Second Quartet (1950) but also Britten’s Second Quartet (1945), written in part as a tribute to Purcell on the 350th anniversary of his death. Where the idiom of the Bliss is centrally identifiable as the work of a British composer, fluent and positive, the Britten is in a different league. No doubt as a result of his experience as an occasional viola player, Britten regularly devises sounds from the four instruments that are totally original, quite unlike anything ever written before.

The Bliss is in a conventional four-movement form; and, though in several movements there is a suspicion of note-spinning, the results are still satisfying, not least in the intense, lyrical slow movement. The scherzo is the liveliest movement, with the slow introduction to the finale again intense. The Britten, as well as being original in its use of the medium, is also highly original in its structure. The first movement is in an unconventional sonata form, seemingly wayward at first but quickly revealing its logic. The brilliant central scherzo brings some astonishing effects, while the massive finale – one of the longest movements that Britten ever wrote, a chaconne in tribute to Purcell – is formidable in its range of expression. The whole work reflects the new confidence that the composer felt just after the extraordinry triumph of his opera Peter Grimes.

The Barbirollis give warm, idiomatic, intense performances of both works, at times reflecting the comment of one critic in a review, who described their playing as ‘red-blooded’. The superb Purcell Chacony in G minor makes the perfect pendant to the Britten, while Delius’s Late Swallows (1922), rounds the disc off charmingly. A very welcome issue.