The Amsterdam Sinfonietta’s latest release reverts to the concept of their Brahms/Schoenberg and Mahler/Beethoven albums (8/11, 1/12) in that it places music originally written for string orchestra alongside a chamber work played by the full ensemble. In her booklet note, the Sinfonietta’s artistic director Candida Thompson argues that Brahms’s Op 111 Quintet becomes a ‘symphony for strings’ when performed by a larger body of players and that ‘some of the textures seem even more glorious’. And she is in some ways right, though the attempt itself may well arouse mixed feelings.

The performance is indisputably strong, as one might expect from this ensemble. Despite the greater sonic weight there’s no danger of the musical argument being muddied. Form and emotion are scrupulously balanced throughout and counterpoint is pristine in its clarity. There’s exuberance as well as care in the playing; and it’s hard to resist the sweep of the opening, with its leaping cellos and basses, or the exhilaration of the closing pages, which the players give us twice, the first time straight, the second as a bonus track, replete with whoops and whistles as, one assumes, party time sets in. The sound is, as Thompson states, ‘glorious’, though its sheer opulence results, inevitably perhaps, in the replacement of intimacy with grandeur, and the emotional balance sometimes shifts: the Adagio, for instance, loses some of its melancholy bleakness and becomes warmly consolatory.

The disc’s raison d’être, however, is the Bartók Divertimento, which gets a terrific performance here. The playing blends muscularity with detail, rhythms are trenchant and incisive, and the shifting dynamic contrasts between the concertante soloists is beautifully and precisely observed. Despite the assertiveness of the start, the first movement soon bristles with uneasy tension; and the Molto adagio, measured and inexorable, is a real descent into a nightmare that continues to haunt even after the panache and vigour of the finale have swept some of its anxieties away. It’s a fine achievement, particularly when you remember it is played without a conductor, and directed from the leader’s chair with wonderful élan by Thompson herself.