Shortly after Vaughan Williams’s death in August 1958, his widow, Ursula, donated to the British Library his manuscript scores, among them a clutch of chamber works written between 1895 and 1906 that he had not approved for publication. Unheard for more than eight decades, it’s a treasurable haul which throws fascinating light on VW’s stylistic development and battle to find his own voice.

The two earliest efforts here date from 1898, three years after VW had finished his studies at the Royal College of Music. In the String Quartet (eventually premièred in June 1904) VW’s combines an emerging modal sense with, at times, an intriguingly Slavic air. There’s already something of the hymn tune about the sunny main theme of the third movement ‘Intermezzo’, while the theme-and-variations finale shows inventiveness and economy of thought.

First heard three years before the Quartet, the Quintet for clarinet, horn, violin, cello and piano strikes me as a less distinctive achievement, its relaxed, playful mood more akin to a serenade. Nevertheless, there’s much fetching inspiration along the way, and the songful slow movement glows with Brahmsian warmth.

Completed in October 1903, the Piano Quintet (which, like Schubert’s Trout Quintet, dispenses with the second violin and incorporates a double bass instead) was twice revised before its December 1905 première at London’s Aeolian Hall. The influence of Brahms is also fitfully evident in this striking creation, some of whose ideas suggest an orchestral scope and imagination: indeed, Bernard Benoliel believes Vaughan Williams may well have sanctioned at least one performance with a string band. The last of its three movements brings another theme and variations; touchingly, some 50 years later, VW devised another set of variations on the same melody for the finale of his Violin Sonata. The Nocturne and Scherzo for string quintet from 1906 grew out of a Ballade and Scherzo penned two years previously, and it’s instructive to compare the Gallic sophistication of the later Scherzo with the vigour of its looser-limbed predecessor.

Of the remaining items, the most substantial is Household Music (alias Three Preludes on Welsh Hymn-Tunes), written in 1940-41 and inspired by Vaughan Williams’s assertion that composers should devise works for ‘combinations of all manner of instruments which might be played by people whiling away the waiting-hours of war’ (as expounded in a 1940 broadcast entitled The Composer in Wartime). Aficionados will doubtless already possess Hickox’s pioneering account of this lovely triptych in VW’s orchestral transcription (11/95); it’s recorded here for the first time in its original guise for string quartet. Both the Romance and Pastoral for violin and piano and miniature Suite de Ballet for flute and piano were probably written before the Great War (the latter for the distinguished French flautist, Louis Fleury). Little is known about the provenance of the deeply felt Romance for viola and piano, a posthumously published essay possibly intended for the great Lionel Tertis.

An entrancing voyage of discovery, in sum, whose pleasures are enhanced by the Nash Ensemble’s tirelessly eloquent advocacy, admirable production-values and Michael Kennedy’s authoritative booklet-essay.