They are integrated yet individual, four musicians each outstanding but not standing out as such. The internal balance of the Artemis Quartet reflects their equilibrium and the recording captures the “rosiny” timbres of their instruments. From the beginning of Op 18 No 1 (1801) the Artemis proclaim a message: the 18th century is over. Succinct and nervously energetic, an explicitly concentrated exposé of this movement hurls the genre itself into pastures new, the screws tightened in the development where the principal motif, now polyphonically arranged, screams defiance. Yet this is no brutal attack because space is created for expressive inflections of every kind; and similarly created for the slow movement where Beethoven depicts the final tragedy of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in a coda whose violence the Artemis don’t play down.

The equivalent movement of Op 127 (1825) speaks an altogether different language – one of introversion, perhaps inspired by the sacred music of bygone centuries that Beethoven had studied in preparation for the Missa solemnis, completed the previous year. The Artemis latch on to its atmosphere, their crystalline style no bar to reaching into the innermost corners of this set of variations, the sublime third sublimely played.

The playing is indeed formidable. Too formidable sometimes? That’s the nagging feeling in the last two movements because a transcendent technique allows efficiency to take over as well. The sound thins out here too, which doesn’t help; but it doesn’t hinder what’s also communicated – the uncompromising honesty and probity of these musicians.