The BL Sounds website presents an enormous selection of classical recordings from the holdings of the British Library (available to most of the European Union only due to copyright restrictions) and the section of Chamber Music has recently been further expanded to include rare recordings from the first years of the twentieth century BL Sounds Chamber Music. 

Le Société du Double Quintette, a group of French string and wind players, made some of the earliest chamber music recordings, most of those heard here are from 1907.  Their repertoire ranged from popular arrangements of works by Boccherini and Mendelssohn to chamber works such as the Aubades by Edouard Lalo. 

Three of the members also made first recordings of Beethoven’s Serenade for flute, violin and viola Op. 25, and the Serenade for violin, viola and cello Op. 8 also in 1907, only eighty years after the death of Beethoven.

The English String Quartet performed between 1902 and 1925.  Their earlier recordings were made for Zonophone in 1915 while the later ones were made for Columbia in the early 1920s.  The viola was played by composer Frank Bridge and the Quartet performs his Phantasy for String Quartet.

The London String Quartet existed from 1908 to 1934 and recorded prolifically.  Amongst popular fare by Tchaikovsky, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert can be found two movements from the Biscay Quartet by John Blackwood McEwen and two movements from the Quartet in A minor by Antonio Scontrino.  The group is also joined by Australian pianist William Murdoch in part of Dvorak's Piano Quintet Op. 81.