The Doric are perhaps the foremost British string quartet at the moment, so their turn to Beethoven in their 25th-anniversary year is an important one. They choose not to proceed set by set through the 16 quartets but select five works from early, middle and late periods, so over the course of this first volume you travel from the first and last works from Op 18, via the first ‘Rasumovsky’ and the Serioso to Op 127, the gateway to the late quartets. Thus Beethoven’s development in and of the form is encapsulated in a single programme, from the forging of the composer’s individual quartet voice in the Mozart- and Haydn-influenced Op 18, the expansion of structure and content and then its consolidation and compression in Opp 59 and 95, followed by the first of the late works, in which Beethoven was unmoored from any sort of connection with contemporary mores and expectations, and in which the ultimate in seriousness and the ultimate in ironic flippancy are two sides of the same coin.

The Doric’s long experience of earlier and later repertoire in a number of eagerly received recordings for Chandos stands them well in good stead as they approach this repertoire landmark. The quartet’s unanimity of approach and intonation goes without saying but it is worth remarking again upon the innate conversational quality of their musicianship. They play as if for each other rather than for the microphones, observing judiciously the many stretches in which this music remains at piano, pianissimo or below, so that sudden dynamic contrasts, sforzando stings and moments such as the gruff cello outbursts in the opening movement of Op 59 No 1 really register with the immediacy that they should.

Telling touches of portamento personalise their playing further, while the songfulness of their approach reaches its full expression in the rich and expansive Adagio of Op 127, only to be deliciously undercut by the muscular rhythms of the ensuing Scherzo. At the same time we hear again a certain rustic quality in the Doric’s playing that Harriet Smith identified in their benchmark Schumann (12/11). This first instalment is an auspicious embarkation upon their Beethoven journey, distinguished by the ever-youthful freshness of their music-making and by their habitual inability to take any phrase, any note for granted.