At the outset of his career Bridge established his name through a series of chamber works in which he demonstrated a wholly idiomatic understanding of string instruments, with the viola, his own main instrument, frequently having prominence. The Second String Quartet, Bridge’s first chamber masterwork, is a transitional work between his early and later styles. The Phantasy Quartet, written in a late Romantic idiom, belongs to the same period as Bridge’s most famous work, the orchestral tone poem, The Sea (Naxos 8.557167). The intense, dark and often frenetic Fourth String Quartet was completed four years before his death.