Before the “industrial” minimalism of Louis Andriessen and the serial-tonality of Peter Schat, the previous generation of Dutch composers had decidedly less provocative aims. Not less serious, however, as this disc of string quartet music by Lex van Delden (1919‑88) confirms. Indeed, it is the thoughtful neo-classicism of Andriessen’s father Hendrik that comes to mind when listening to the First Quartet (1954), with its finely sustained Lento and a finale that wraps up expressive issues with a conviction anything but complacent. A transcription of his Eighth Symphony, the Second Quartet (1964) is no less expertly realised – a tensile Scherzo offset by larger movements that integrate diverse material and extremes of motion with satisfying consistency.

By the time of his Third Quartet (1979), van Delden had become a marginal(ised) figure in Dutch music. Deriving its inspiration from canvases by “fantastic realist” painter Carel Willink (finely reproduced in the booklet), its four movements outline an orthodox formal scheme whose tight internal logic suggests that links between the paintings have been resourcefully “translated” into musical terms. Musica di Catasto (1981), a commission to mark the 150th anniversary of land registry in the Netherlands, replaces cello with double bass (as in the Fourth Quartet by Dutch émigré Bernard van Dieren) in music whose motivic severity and allusions to Tchaikovsky suggest a composer not overly concerned his time may have passed. Persuasively played by the Utrecht Quartet, finely recorded and with detailed notes by the composer’s son, this disc suggests it may yet return.