Moeran, the Anglo-Irish composer who made Kerry his spiritual home and died at Kenmare in 1950, never published this quartet; it was found among his papers after his death and appeared in print only in 1956. Tonight's movement shows why its rediscovery mattered: a long-breathed Lento that sings like one of the folk melodies Moeran collected in the pubs of Norfolk and Kerry, tender, unhurried, and touched with the loneliness of the coasts he loved.
