For the last of their three Britten discs, the British Emperor Quartet have gathered five of his earliest works, including the String Quartet in F and the Simple Symphony. These works demonstrate the young Britten’s developing personal style, beyond the influences of his teacher Frank Bridge as well as Bartók and Schoenberg. In 1930, these very influences prompted his most intensely progressive work, Quartettino, unpublished and unperformed until after his death. Retreating somewhat from its terse language, he only returned to the quartet medium to compose his three later, numbered quartets.