A rarely heard masterwork by Buckinghamshire composer Edmund Rubbra will be featured in a concert in Rickmansworth on June 8.

The multi-award winning Maggini Quartet (see photograph above) will perform Rubbra’s Third Quartet, which was composed in 1963.

The concert programme will also include two masterpieces of the Austro-German repertoire – Joseph Haydn’s Quartet in B flat major op.55 no.3 and Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet.

A student of Gustav Holst, Rubbra was born in Northampton but spent most of his adult life in Speen and Gerrards Cross. He also lived in Jordans for a time. Rubbra was a music lecturer at Oxford University and later became professor of composition at the Guildhall School of Music. One of his most distinguished former Guildhall students is Rickmansworth-based Christopher Gunning, who won a BAFTA award in 2007 for Best Film Music for La Vie en Rose.

A prolific composer of instrumental and vocal works, Rubbra was highly respected by major musical figures such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Sir Adrian Boult His fame was at its peak in the mid-20th century but his name had been almost forgotten by the time of his death in 1986. Nevertheless, many now regard him as one of the most important British composers of his era.

The June 8 concert will be the fourth in a series of concerts that the popular Maggini Quartet has given for Three Rivers Music Society. It will be held at the Baptist Church , High Street , Rickmansworth WD3 1EH and will begin at 7.30pm (20-minute pre-concert talk from 7pm).

Tickets at the door (£16 nonmembers, reduced price for members. Under 25s free.) Further information and online tickets at trms.elgar.org