Burgess’s only completed string quartet is dedicated to the Primavera Quartet, winner of the 1977 Naumberg Award in chamber music. Burgess became acquainted with the Quartet through the award-winning American composer Stanley Silverman who married the Quartet’s principal violinist in 1980. After hearing the quartet, Burgess decided to compose a piece for them and he completed the work on 8 March 1980.

Reminiscent of Shostakovich and early Schoenberg, the quartet proceeds from a somewhat atonal Allegro commodo, through an Adagio interrupted by a lively piu mosso, to a tonal and lyrical Allegro molto.

Two movements from the quartet were performed in 1994, a year after Burgess’s death. The first complete performance was given by the Heath Quartet at the Burgess Foundation in Manchester in June 2014.

A second (incomplete) string quartet by Burgess was discovered in 2023 and performed on 1 December the same year.

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