Could this (http://www.recordsinternational.com/cd.php?cd=01O029) be the first commercial recording of Castillon's fine string quartet in A minor (not his only one, but the only one I've heard?) (There actually is another recording, made by Steve over at IMSLP here (http://imslp.org/wiki/String_Quartets,_Op.3_%28Castillon,_Alexis_de%29) ; I recommend having a listen. It's a little faster - by two minutes - than the 33 minutes mentioned by Records International; I don't know yet what the total timings are of the latter recording. (Composed perhaps ca.1867, published probably 1900.)) Anyhow, good piece. On the new recording coupled with a better-known, not nearly well-enough-known, quartet by Saint-Saëns.
I strongly suspect you're right, Eric - as you usually are! We have a good commercial recording of the Op. 1 and Op. 7 Piano Quintet and Quartet, but, as far as I know, not one of the A minor String Quartet. Many thanks for the tip off - and straight on the wants list it goes.
It doesn't distress me too much that the quartet is coupled with the Saint-Saens. Both his late quartets are well recorded - the latest being a very fine Naxos disc. I've come to think Saint-Saens is a seriously under-rated composer, and in my view the more of him the better!
The two works have this in common, based on my experience with them, though one is estimated? to date from earlier in the composer's career, ends with a slow movement, etc. , the other (the Saint-Saëns) seems to be (I think the date is more certain- composition dates are mostly known better with him generally speaking?) - from 1899 (a year or two before the Castillon was published(!)), "typically" in four movements, dedicated to a well-known violinist, etc. - but they both seem to me mostly inward, and high in expressive charge. (Ok, ok, not _that_ unusual in minor-mode string quartets, especially Romantic minor-mode quartets from the late 19th century ;) .)