Impassioned argument: Elizabeth Maconchy's string quartets

"For me, the best music is an impassioned argument". So said one of Britain's greatest 20th-century composers, Elizabeth Maconchy. Who?? Despite her many awards and medals - including a damehood in 1987 - and a lifetime spent promoting new music, Elizabeth's work slipped out of fashion and out of view in the latter part of her remarkable career. With concertos and symphonies, vocal music, chamber works, five operas, an operetta and three ballets to her name, Elizabeth's voice is that of economy, elegance and rich expression. And it is in her century-spanning 13 string quartets that her development - and musical outlook - as an artist are most closely expressed. With a cultural resurgence in all things mid-century, Tom Service chats to Janell Yeo of the Bloomsbury Quartet and considers whether the time is now ripe for a reclamation of Elizabeth's place at our musical top table.