Revived by these artists at the 2001 Lichfield Festival, Bax’s String Quintet was written in 1908 at Glencolumcille in County Donegal. Totalling some 38 minutes and cast in four movements, this is one of Bax’s lengthiest chamber offerings and shows him very much in thrall to his Irish surroundings. Many Baxians will in fact be familiar with the slow movement from its 1922 rearrangement as the Lyrical Interlude (exquisitely realised by the Maggini Quartet and violist Garfield Jackson on Naxos, 1/03), while the composer similarly borrowed the first movement’s intoxicating second subject for his 1920 piano piece A Hill Tune. Even with some discreet editorial pruning by the Divertimenti’s first violinist Paul Barritt, the Quintet is perhaps too diffuse for its own good, but there’s a generous store of memorable tunes as well as some gorgeously rich sonorities, and the work as a whole leaves an engaging impression.

Bax was a 19-year-old student at the RAM when he completed his A major String Quartet, most probably during the autumn term (the manuscript of the central Andante con moto e cantabile is dated November 25, 1902). It’s a confident achievement for one so young, the opening movement particularly so (the coda’s mood of wistful nostalgia strikes me as entirely characteristic of its creator), and it would be a hard heart indeed which did not respond to the slow movement’s full-throated lyricism or the tangy, outdoor charm of its middle section (which boasts some effective pizzicato writing). If the high-spirited scherzo-finale is just too garrulous to be entirely convincing, there’s still plenty of tumbling fantasy and variety of expression on show (the spirit of Dvorák beams benignly upon the revellers).

I can report that both works are persuasively performed here (Bax’s occasionally extravagant technical demands are negotiated with unerring skill) and very well recorded. Altogether, a thoroughly likeable and valuable release.