The Basque composer Andrés Isasi (1890-1940) started writing eight string quartets. Only four, perhaps five, were finished, four (Nos 2 5) within a concentrated two-year period in 1920 21. Their numbering and cataloguing is haphazard, with No ‘0’ in E minor (1908) listed as Op 83, while No 2 in A minor – with which it is coupled on the previous volume of the series – bears the opus number 11 (No 1 in G major, Op 11, to follow presumably on the third and final volume with No 5, dates from 1911). The incomplete Sixth and Seventh have no opus numbers at all.

Isasi’s style is gently late Romantic, anachronistically so for the 1920s, but the works are well put together (he studied in Berlin with Humperdinck) and have a true sense of dialogue. In four conventional, well-defined movements, the Fourth runs – in this performance – for just under 30 minutes. The Third lasts but 20, its three spans following a moderately paced faster-slow format. The style is only palely Spanish, lacking the vivacity of Falla or Gerhard. The brief couplings are entertaining trifles, the Aria possibly a lost movement of the fragmentary, undated Seventh.

The Isasi Quartet have changed half their line-up since the first volume, with cellist Yvan Chiffoleau replacing Matthias Weinmann, Anna Bohigas dropping down to second violin and newcomer Annick Roussin becoming leader. The performances are still executed as well as the previous group although intonation is a touch edgier than before. Naxos’s sound is cool and natural.