The German-Bohemian composer Wenzel Heinrich Veit (1806–64) – Václav Jindřich Veit in Czech –is one of music’s most unjustly forgotten figures.

As these first recordings of his four string quartets reveal, he is not only the link between the Bohemian composers of the end of the Classical period and the wave of Czech Romanticism that began with Smetana – he is also an outstanding composer in his own right.

His four quartets trace the stylistic evolution of his time: they emerge from a debt to Haydn and Beethoven and embrace Mendelssohn and Schumann on their way to pre-echoes of Dvořák.

This recording of the first two Quartets will be followed by Nos. 3 and 4 in a later release, already ‘in the can’ and now being prepared.