Bliss: String Quartet No1; Conversations Op15

"This is, quite simply, another irresistible bargain from the Maggini Quartet and Naxos."

"The two string quartets that frame the light-hearted and charming Conversations demonstrate a rare gift for genuinely idiomatic string writing, despite being very different in sentiment... At all times, the Maggini Quartet play with graceful panache, enchantingly joined by Nicholas Daniel and Michael Cox for Conversations, the jeu d'esprit that is Bliss's homage to 'Les Six'."

"Try the 1915 quartet first, a work Bliss subsequently withdrew. The impassioned sound of the Magginis comes as no surprise; these players, you feel, could make even a lamp-post weep. The surprise lies in the music: decidedly pastoral, riding the folk song modes in the andante in a charming way the older Bliss rarely allowed. The later B-flat quartet brings its own pleasures: a tauter argument, a greater variety of mood and texture, acerbic one moment, romantic the next, with the odd bluesy phrase reminiscent of Gershwin."