I recently reviewed a CD of Vaughan Williams music for violin and piano. Except for that version of The Lark Ascending, the music was unfamiliar. Similarly with this excellent CD.

The First String Quartet was composed in 1908 after Vaughan Williams had completed a period of study with Ravel (who greatly admired his music) and was significantly revised in 1921. It showcases both tenderness and more impassioned Ravelian passages, which the Tippett Quartet contrast effectively, although it’s hard not to sense the presence of Debussy’s Quartet as well. I especially liked the way they ramped up the tension in the first movement and then gradually released it into an interweaving of parts which seems to anticipate the Tallis Fantasia. The short Minuet is piquantly folk-song-ish and the Trio bows playfully to the spirit of Haydn. The Finale sees Vaughan Williams indulge in uncharacteristically “display” writing and the Tippetts play this to the hilt. The first theme suggested to me animals coming in two by two, with the viola in...