Howells: Fantasy String Quartet & String Quartet No. 3 "In Gloucestershire" - Delius: String Quartet

The Britten Quartet highlights two complementary facets of the postwar British string quartet: two works marked by the hardships of war and filled with a reinvented folk tradition blended with sophisticated and refined composition. In these elegiac pieces, imbued with poignant introspection, Delius and Howells use contemplation or memories of a beloved and restorative natural world as a backdrop for their torments and hopes: the former evoking memories of his garden in France, which he was forced to leave hastily under German pressure, and the latter, his native Gloucestershire. Two major works of British chamber music, at once pastoral and impressionistic (the influence of Ravel and Debussy is evident), rarely recorded and well worth discovering.