It isn’t difficult to feel confident as the Cypress Quartet launch into the first movement of Op 59 No 1. There is an ambience of breath and space as the cello theme unfolds at Beethoven’s marking minim=88. Yet any suggestion of a comprehensive expressive range begins to fade as the response to a new theme (0'46") different in character, of falling and rising quavers to be played dolce, is muted. Less engaging is the trace of ponderousness in the second movement, Allegro vivace e sempre scherzando, and a constrained emotional commitment to essence in the slow movement, Adagio molto e mesto, its sublimity buttressed by the subheading ‘A weeping willow or acacia tree over my brother’s grave’. This for Beethoven was a rare outpouring of sadness – mesto – a term he had last used eight years earlier but now accentuated by a metronome indication of semiquaver=88 (he had put in precise numbers for all the quartets up to Op 95) which the Cypress don’t ignore. But lines are short on nuanced shading; and brushed aside are the two immediate indicators of mood for all players, piano and sotto voce. The stamp of grief is diluted.

An unwillingness to play softly and convey delicate differences within a range of colours is an oft-repeated shortcoming. The slow movement of Op 59 No 2, marked Molto adagio and instructed ‘to be played with much feeling’, emerges defused of a raptness of feeling, subtle gradations of dynamics particularly from piano to pianissimo insufficiently articulated. The Belcea, achieving micro-variations in tone through masterly bowing and shrewd voicing, create, at the same tempo, a poignant suspense that the Cypress cannot match. Their plain-speaking style carries an apparent refusal to reach into most of the music. Yet there are moments when they show promise, in the first and last movements of Op 59 No 3, and in Op 95, which stands well above the rest. Otherwise the Cypress don’t straddle the tension between the heroic, the lyrical and the spiritual imbued in works forming a cosmos of their own.