Too often bracketed with the English pastoral school, Edmund Rubbra (1901-86) was a highly individual voice in British music. The tightly argued medium of the string quartet suited him well and these three works span 40 years of his output from the stern music of the 1930s to the late, bare music of the late 70s. The booklet note calls the music "quietly optimistic", but I hear a bleakness and desolation in the superb lento of the first quartet that recalls Shostakovich; the fugal scurryings of the fourth have a note of desperation. This is surely music that will grow in stature, especially through these committed performances.