Here’s further proof that John Pickard (b1962) is one of the most edifying and accomplished composers around. Toccata Classics gives us the First and most recent of his five string quartets. Dating from 1991 and acknowledged by its creator as a key work in his early development, the former is a 38 minute canvas of vaulting ambition cast in 10 interlinked sections, admirably uncompromising and imbued with a probing sense of intrepid exploration, yet always enviably sure in its progress and full of the most absorbing dialogue between the four voices. If anything, the five-movement Fifth Quartet (completed 22 years later) proves an even more idiomatically assured and engrossing achievement, the harmonic idiom now rather less astringent but with ideas that are more sharply individual. Above all, Pickard’s masterly writing evinces an entrancing wholeness, keen proportion and profoundly humane spirit that nourish both head and heart. Any listener familiar with the quartets of, say, Britten, Simpson, McCabe or David Matthews should waste no time in making this marvellous work’s acquaintance.

The Brodowski Quartet lend this enormously rewarding repertoire thrillingly persuasive, spellbindingly eloquent advocacy, and their sterling efforts have been most naturally captured by Michael Ponder’s microphones. Pickard himself pens a lucid and helpful booklet essay, which is prefaced by a highly personable and illuminating encomium from one of his composition pupils, Paul Mealor (b1975). Do try and hear this wholly admirable coupling.