My usual policy of never reading booklet notes before I write about an album under consideration paid off handsomely in the case of this closing chapter of the Calidore Quartet’s Beethoven cycle, which happens to cover the six early quartets, Op 18. ‘So much of this music seems to allude to the late quartets’, I said to myself, and sure enough Dr Rachel Stroud opens her note with a famous quote from TS Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’ from his series of four poems Four Quartets (part 5):

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.

She then goes on to stress how Beethoven habitually struggled with beginnings and endings. And that’s where I bring in the Calidore Quartet, whose comprehensively insightful performances of these six masterpieces tend more towards prophecy of future innovators (Beethoven himself most of all) than reflections of, say, Haydn or Mozart. To give a couple of examples, the Menuetto from No 5 resembles in its theme and mood the Alla danza tedesca from Op 130; the finale of No 6, the La malinconia: Adagio leading to Allegretto quasi allegro: isn’t this a premonition of the dramatic extremes in the finale to Op 135, ie Grave, ma non troppo tratto leading to Allegro? That’s how it seems to me.

I also cite the theme-and-variations Andante cantabile of No 5 that surely anticipates Op 131’s Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile fourth movement and the Adagio, ma non troppo e molto cantabile from Op 127. As with the early piano sonatas, Beethoven beneath the surface is much the same no matter when he is writing, provided the performers understand what they’re playing, which the Calidore certainly do.

I question just one small interpretative detail: in the fiery Menuetto from the Fourth Quartet, the Trio, at 1'22" – beneath shimmering triplets from the first violin, are exchanges between the second violin and the viola and cello. Need the reduction in pulse for this Trio have been quite so drastic? The Takács Quartet (Decca, 4/04) make the music work beautifully without troubling the pulse.

But, in general, I left the set with more admiring comments than notes of criticism. At the start of Op 18 No 6, which resembles a light, quick-tempo Mozart opera duet, I love the Calidore’s animated approach, their keen interchanges. Elsewhere, their clarity, attack, precision and pooled intelligence invariably impress, as does Judith Sherman’s scrupulously balanced sound production.

Happily my assessment chimes with the views of my Gramophone colleagues Richard Wigmore (on the middle-period quartets, 10/24 – ‘Beethoven-playing of rare vividness and technical aplomb’), and, in the late quartets, Peter Quantrill (5/23 – ‘In music notorious for the challenges it poses to successive generations of first-time listeners, the Calidores issue a friendly invitation, made the more enticing by a level of technical finesse up there with the best versions old and new, and studio engineering that places the listener at a respectable (but not too safe) distance’).

‘Not too safe’ is always a killer with Beethoven, in any respect, and having sampled both sets I can concur with the views of both writers. Hopefully a complete box-set will be forthcoming before too long and when that appears it’ll prove a strong contender alongside the Artemis, Belcea, Busch (incomplete but indispensable), Guarneri (their first recording – a reissue is forthcoming), Juilliard (second recording), Lindsay (first or second recording), PraŽák, Takács (my own favourite among digital sets) and others. Very enthusiastically recommended.