This disc gathers together Ottorino Respighi's main works for string quartet, a medium with which he was reputedly uncomfortable, though his achievement in the genre was by no means negligible. The structurally conventional Quartet in D Minor (1909) is a comparatively early piece, which reveals the influence of his teachers Rimsky-Korsakov and Bruch, and also has the heart-on-sleeve immediacy of his better-known orchestral music.

Il Tramonto (1918) and the Quartetto Dorico (1924) are more experimental, and reflect Respighi's later fascination with early music. Il Tramonto adds a mezzo soloist to the basic quartet for a declamatory setting of Shelley that takes Monteverdi as its model. The austere Quartetto Dorico derives its harmonic palette from the modes of medieval church music. The performances from the New Hellenic Quartet are very extrovert - too much so in the Dorico. Stella Doufexis sings Il Tramonto cleanly, but doesn't make nearly as much of the words as she could.