The epithet ‘French Beethoven’ remained familiar – as did the story of the hunting accident which gave the string quintet in C minor op. 38 ist nickname ‘La balle’, or the ‘Bullet’ quintet. Otherwise little was remembered of the composer George Onslow (1784-1853), whose contemporaries regularly and confidently ranked Onslow’s quartets alongside those of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.

Recently, ensembles such as the Mandelring Quartet and conductors such as Johannes Goritzki have recorded Onslow...