Although Britten was drawn to chamber music throughout his life, both as a pianist and as a viola player - and, as Donald Mitchell has said, he was entirely a chamber musician in whichever field he worked - his output in this area is comparatively slight. Juvenilia aside, he composed only three numbered string quartets. His first dates from 1940; like many a composer before him, he waited until he had years of professional experience behind him before his first venture into this daunting medium. For a composer who - to put it mildly - had an uneasy relationship with Beethoven's music, his First Quartet is of a decisively Beethovenian stamp, so much so that Britten's own personality is occasionally swamped. Beethoven is also hovering about in the Second Quartet, dating from 1945. David Matthews has said that the Second Quartet '...stands in a similar relation to the First as do Beethoven's Razumovsky Quartets to his Op. 18 set.' It's a useful analogy; the opening movement in particular has much of the grandeur, expansiveness and process of middle-period Beethoven. The Third Quartet, dating from 1975, was almost his last composition. For years he had promised his friend Hans Keller a new quartet. After composing Phaedra, he told Keller that 'the flutes and piccolo tended to get left out' because of the physical difficulty of moving his partially paralysed arm up the manuscript paper. Keller suggested to him that 'four staves would be easier'; this persuaded the composer to return to a medium that he had neglected for thirty years. In his final quartet, he further explores themes from his recently completed final opera, Death in Venice. The last movement, entitled La Serenissima, was actually composed there; Britten said that the tolling passacaglia theme was derived from the sound of Venetian bells. It is the most personal of his chamber works, and I think that it is one of the most significant works for the medium of the twentieth century. It has long been a speciality of the Belceas, and I'm very glad that they have had the opportunity to record it so early in their career. Corina Belcea plays the long cantilena in the Solo movement with an unfailingly pure line and intense concentration. Here, and elsewhere in the quartet, Britten seems to be paying homage to Mahler, whose music he admired throughout his life. Hans Keller pointed out the similarity in tone between the fourth movement, entitled Burlesque, and Mahler's Rondo-Burleske from his Ninth Symphony. Although there is nothing in Britten's quartets as technically challenging for the players as - for instance - the scherzos of Bartók's Fourth and Fifth Quartets, they are certainly not easy. The Belceas are totally untroubled by the highly virtuosic Vivace of the Second Quartet; they take Britten's rather quick metronome marks seriously, and when they occasionally depart from them - as they do in the opening movement of the First - they do so for a reason. Unlike the Maggini Quartet (on Naxos), they choose to ignore most of the juvenilia, adding only the cheerful Three Divertimenti to the numbered quartets. I rather regret the absence of the Quartettino, a remarkably assured and wholly characteristic piece dating from 1930; you can hear that on the Magginis' set. I haven't yet seen a 'finished' copy, so I can't comment on the liner notes. Like the earlier Belcea releases the recording was made in Briiten country, at Potton Hall in Suffolk, and is everything that one would wish for. I was blown away by the intelligence and technical finish of the Belceas, and I look forward to getting to know these CDs better over the next few months.

Reviewed by Sandy Matheson