This Brodsky recording of the Elgar and Delius String Quartets first appeared in 1984 and is welcome in its CD transfer. The sound is natural and unforced throughout. The disc has two strong rivals in the Medici (Meridian) and Gabrieli (Chandos) recordings. My first choice for the Elgar is still the Gabrieli, paired with a definitive performance of Walton's Quartet, but there is strong attraction, too, in the Brodsky's choice of the Delius. Their playing of the Elgar lacks some of the intensity that the Gabrieli and especially the Medici bring to it, yet their more detached, lightly lyrical view of this in many ways enigmatic work undoubtedly reflects a facet of the music itself. The Delius was written in 1916–17, but there are no wartime references to be heard, except the obvious escape into a dream-world far removed from the realities of the Somme. The ''Late swallows'' slow movement, in particular, is as much an elegy for a vanishing world as the comparable movement in the Elgar.'