The English composer John Ireland drew his inspiration from his country’s heritage, its poetry and its landscapes. He emerged as a celebrated composer towards the end of World War I, having destroyed almost all of his student works, but not the two String Quartets featured on this disc. Both are modelled after the late quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. The Holy Boy, one of Ireland’s most popular works, was written on Christmas Day, 1913, and is here adapted for string quartet, one of several arrangements of the work by the composer.