Commissioned by the BBC and premiered by the Chilingirian String Quartet.

Quoting Wood: In my Second and Third Quartets I attempted sectional, agglutinative forms: in my Fourth I return to the conventional four movement formofmy First Quartet of 1962. Both works build up (as in the 19th century symphony) to the Finale, thus making it the most substantial movement, which provides a climax to the work. The First Movement has, in both works, onlythestatus of an Introduction.

But there the consc...