4. Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)
Stanford was born in Dublin and became Professor of Composition at thethen newly formed Royal College Of Music in London. He is pretty well known in the UK, I'm not sure if this is the case elsewhere in the world. Anyway, I'm just showing that there are gradations of well-knownedness, and that also, even with the more famous composer, not all of their compositions get recorded.
Stanford wrote eight string quartets. The first two were recorded some years back, the other six only recently by the Dante Quartet for SOMM Recordings. They are real good. I like them because they have such a full sound - there is so much going on. Here is the sixth string quartet in A minor and it really is the biz.
David Pulsford, guest editor, @lesser-known-composers