I've had a number of CDs over the years with playing by the British group, the Delmé String Quartet, and I've been generally pleased with them. Their series of recordings of the quartets of Robert Simpson, for instance, was outstanding. So, it was with great anticipation that I bought this CD of string quartets by a recent discovery of mine, the British composer Bernard Stevens (1916-1983), some of whose chamber music I'd recently acquired on the Albany label (containing the superb Piano Trio) played by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble. I have to say that I was a little let down by the playing here, though. There are more than a few passages with obvious intonation problems and, furthermore, there are several places where it feels like the quartet is simply marking time. And this is certainly not because of longueurs in the music itself. No, Stevens was a master composer, I've come to believe, and in particular his style is tightly contrapuntal in a tonal (but exploratory) style that is immediately accessible and almost always emotionally communicative.The disc contains the early Theme and Variations for String Quartet, Op. 11 (1949), a nineteen minute set of twelve variations on a hymn-like theme that nonetheless describes a harmonic arc that goes far afield and then returns to its home base in the key of E flat. The variations are grouped in such a way as to suggest four movements typical of those in a classic quartet--Adagio, Allegretto, Andante, Allegro. The final 'movement', Variation 12, is a fugue on a new subject that brings back and combines with the original theme in its peroration. A neat, effective piece.String Quartet No. 2, Op. 34 (1962) (so numbered because Stevens considered the Theme and Variations to be his Quartet No. 1) is based on a twelve-tone row so arranged that there are two triads, one major, one minor. Consequently one does not immediately discern the twelve-tone-ness of the piece, and indeed it becomes immaterial from the listener's perspective. The harmonic result is a kind of chromaticism that nonetheless stays reasonably within the bounds of tonality. This is a big work, almost thirty minutes long and in four separate movements, and is characterized by its songfulness, dramatic contrasts, contrapuntal interest. Particularly effective is the elegiac Adagio, the third movement, a passacaglia built upon a variation of the initial tone-row. A burst of first violin rhapsody leads into the energetic, almost driven, finale. Reminiscences of the earlier movements flit past before a rather extended recollection of the beginning of the opening movement brings the whole thing to a satisfying close. It is unfortunate that the powerful Adagio contains some of the Delmé's uncertain intonation.The final piece on the CD is the five-movement Lyric Suite for String Trio, Op. 30 (1958). Theme-and-variations technique is again in evidence. The harmonic language is pretty straightforwardly tonal with a few excursions into the extended tonality of, say, Alban Berg. Perhaps the name of the piece is a nod in the direction of Berg's own Lyric Suite. Stevens makes much of the piece's rather limited thematic materials, changing and transforming them from movement to movement, giving the whole a feeling of unity. Overall the Suite is rather somber, but always lyrical. It is in this piece that it appears to me that the three involved members of the Delmé do a certain amount of note-spinning. I suspect this strong piece would benefit from a more impassioned and committed reading.Scott Morrison