It’s pleasant to be able to welcome a new recording of the unaccountably neglected Franck Quartet. Admirers of the Piano Quintet and the Violin Sonata will find here a similar fund of memorable ideas, the same emotional intensity, and an even more impressive mastery of musical architecture. Over the decades there have been some fine recordings – the Pro Arte Quartet in the 1930s (Biddulph, 6/96), the Prague (Praga) and Fitzwilliam (Decca, 10/89 – nla) quartets in the 1970s – but it’s not been a familiar item either on disc or in the concert hall. The Joachim Quartet have the confident manner, expressive range and musical intelligence to make the best case for the music; from the first bar we’re aware of the grand scale, and the long, intense finale never sags. Yet there’s also delicacy and subtlety in the playing, in the twilight world of the Scherzo and in the more reflective parts of the other three movements. The companion piece is a fascinating rarity. Gustave Samazeuilh was a pupil of Chausson and D’Indy but this early work suggests he had been studying the Debussy Quartet. It’s a highly accomplished, colourful piece, its impressionistic idiom giving way in places to Wagnerian expansiveness. The performance is, again, entirely persuasive.