The Sorrel Quartet go a fair way to convincing me that their performances of Britten’s quartet music are worth hearing alongside, if not in place of, the best of the competition. The Sorrel’s account of No. 3 is particularly well conceived, at least until a rather deliberate finale. I can’t think of another recording which presents the subtle structures and oblique arguments of the first two movements more convincingly, and the tonal light and shade of this often elusive music is beautifully conveyed. At the same time, the extreme dynamic range of the recording is not always helpful to the players’ projection, especially in the movement called “Solo”. Here, as in other respects – the flow of No. 3’s finale, in particular – the more even balance and less far-reaching perspectives of the EMI sound for the Endellion Quartet seem preferable. The Endellion players may not relish the music’s extremes as vividly as the Sorrel Quartet, but their sensitive response to its overall design and ultimate sense of tragedy is proving hard to beat.
In the Sorrel’s performance of the Quartet No. 1 there is plenty of fire and fantasy in the fast music. On the other hand, the poetic power of the lyrical passages is more persuasively delineated by the Endellion, or by the Britten Quartet in their fine account for Collins Classics. The tendency of the Sorrel Quartet to adopt a rather stately tempo in order to focus on piquant textural details is also to be heard in the short Alla marcia. With well-turned readings of the Three Divertimentos, this completes a disc of considerable promise, and sufficient interpretative confidence to merit serious attention.'