For British composer William Alwyn CBE the string quartet was the “most perfect of mediums”. His String Quartet No. 1 of 1953 recalls the sound worlds of Dvořák, Janáček and Smetana, while repaying his debt to the Czech tradition with memorably original music. Almost 22 years later, his Second Quartet, ‘Spring Waters’, was prefaced by lines from Turgenev’s novel of the same name: “My careless years, / My precious days, / like the waters of springtime, / Have melted away.” The passionate opening of his Third, composed in 1984 and Alwyn’s swansong, leads to a conclusion of elegiac serenity.