Born in the Scottish borders town of Hawick, McEwen spent most of his youth in Glasgow before moving to London to study. He wrote many important orchestral works including a viola concerto, Three Border Ballads – the first of his works to gain wide currency – and five symphonies. It was to the field of chamber music, however, that McEwen was to devote much of his time, most probably because of the difficulty of having largerscale works performed. His enforced leave of absence from the Royal Academy of Music in 1913 owing to persistent insomnia led to a new lease of creativity. He settled in the seaside village of Cap Ferret, outside Bordeaux, and embarked on many ambitious projects including a cycle of seven sonatas for violin and piano (three of which are recorded on CHAN 9880) and solo piano pieces (CHAN 9933).

On his return to London he emulated many of his contemporaries (such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells) by composing a Fantasy-Quintet; and in the 1940s, a number of innovative string trios. It is his nineteen string quartets, however, which provide the core of his compositional output; from early trailblazing works to the mature, distilled style of his final quartets.