Alexander Glazunov is perhaps the most underrated and underestimated of Russian composers. Having caused a sensation in his youth with an acclaimed First Symphony and a host of other works in the traditional forms, he was unlucky enough to live well into the Revolutionary period, a time with which he was distinctly out of step. Shostakovich writes admiringly of his craft, his critical facilities and his rough-edged kindness, but musical history tends to dismiss him as the drunken conductor who ruined the premiere of Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 1.

While Glazunov’s symphonies have their admirers, especially the colourful Fifth, his string quartets have been seriously overlooked, making this new survey by the excellent Tippett Quartet welcome indeed. Composed between 1881 and 1930, they are perfect examples of late-Romantic Russian chamber music. Spanning his entire career, their blend of Classical discipline and Slavic lyricism is rooted in verdant harmonies and memorably rhapsodic melodies. This first volume journeys chronologically from the First Quartet, an 1882 student work composed under the mentorship of Rimsky-Korsakov, to the Third Quartet, subtitled “the Slavonic,” produced six years later and the most popular of the seven.