Casals’s String Quartet is the work of a 15-year-old debutant in 1893 and it sounds no more or less than that. Its three completed movements (a finale was apparently left unfinished) pay respectful homage to Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven respectively. There is something rather quaint about such an impeccably behaved piece being recorded by musicians whose photo image is so dark and moody. But full credit to the Alart Quartet for devoting themselves to the cause, even if they might have given the rather unrelieved textures a bit more help in the direction of transparency.

The Violin Sonata of 1945 is musically a good deal more resourceful. The picture-postcard Iberianisms of the central Scherzo are something to savour and the concluding slow movement – sympathetically played – rings true emotionally in its retreat into Rachmaninovian nostalgia.

Evidently Casals felt a need to keep this side of his musicianship alive, and, whatever his music’s intrinsic merits, this nicely recorded disc has an undeniable documentary value.