The Swedish composer Franz Berwald (1796–1868) led an extraordinary double life, earning his living variously as a violinist, orthopaedist and industrialist while composing music whose boldness often went unrecognised in his lifetime. His three string quartets — No.1 in G minor (1818), No.2 in A minor and No.3 in E flat major (both 1849) — are separated by more than thirty years, yet share a Romantic spirit built on a classical foundation and a fondness for his 'sandwich' principle, in which a scherzo is folded into the heart of a slow movement. Astonishingly assured for a largely self-taught composer, the music won the admiration of no less a figure than Franz Liszt. It is performed here by the Yggdrasil Quartet, an ensemble devoted to the Nordic chamber-music repertoire.