The history behind Joseph Holbrooke’s Clarinet Quintet in G certainly weaves a tangled musicological web! The work has its roots in a Horn Quintet first heard in May 1904. Within a decade, the composer had incorporated material from this piece into a pair of clarinet quintets (his Opp 15 and 27). Prior to Reginald Kell’s 1939 world première recording, Holbrooke decided to amalgamate both first movements from the two quintets with an entirely new finale. What’s more, when Jack Brymer subsequently broadcast the work, it featured a different slow movement again, subsequently published separately as Eileen Shona (track 3 on the present anthology, and a very fetching evocation it is, too). According to annotator Lewis Foreman, the version recorded here dates from 1910. It’s an appealing, if slightly garrulous creation, boasting a central Andante affetuoso of songful tenderness and well worth an occasional airing.

By contrast, the First String Quartet of 1904 (whose three movements play without a break and which was submitted for the first Cobbett Fantasy competition in 1905) leaves a curiously pallid impression; for all the solid craftsmanship on show, there’s a want of what I’d call truly distinctive invention. Both its two-movement successor from 1915 and all three chosen numbers from the two Folksong Suites (premièred in 1916-17) are rather more striking, though I can’t say the prospect of revisiting them fills me with relish.

Despite one or two untidy corners, these are committed performances from the Rasumovsky Quartet, and clarinettist Richard Hosford really shines in the Quintet. The sound is agreeable but this is a disc primarily for die-hards.