The tensed, animated world of Beethoven’s Fourth Quartet (1798-1800), perhaps the darkest of the six works in his Op 18, sets this imaginative programme off to a dramatic start. The Ruysdael Quartet include the opening movement’s exposition repeat, reiterating the contrast between the first subject’s sense of foreboding and the rather lighter feel of the second subject (0'45"). I liked their hushed manner before the recapitulation (6'04") and their gentle mock-formality in the Andante scherzoso second movement, while the Menuetto is restless rather than driven and the well-played fast finale reflects the first/second subject disparity that was such a striking feature of the first movement.

So far, so familiar, relatively speaking. But come John Cage’s profoundly peaceful String Quartet in Four Parts (1950) and we take to the air with music based partly on the Indian view of the seasons, where spring, summer, autumn and winter are each associated with a particular force, namely creation, preservation, destruction and quiescence. Summer, autumn and winter come first, each plying a variety of meditation, while the livelier ‘Quodlibet’ marks the arrival of spring. The Ruysdaels focus the very singular mood of each movement with considerable skill.

In its day Schubert’s Death and the Maiden (1824) must have seemed as revolutionary as Cage’s Quartet did in 1950. Here the Ruysdaels opt for a cuttingly dramatic approach to the first movement (not too fast and with no first-movement repeat this time). The theme-and-variations second movement opens largely without vibrato, though violinist Joris van Rijn posits the idea that the theme’s consolatory modulation from G minor to E flat major – death as a friend rather than a punitive enemy – brings comfort enough. And while the two final movements counter death with a palpable life force, Louis Andriessen’s … miserere … (2006-07) sounds as if weeping beside the maiden’s bier, at least to start with. Anger sets in later, a harsh, very ‘Andriessen’ variety of anger, though the work’s close suggests an ambivalent manner of repose. The Ruysdael Quartet studied this music with the composer and sound totally at home with its variegated language.

The excellent booklet features a revealing conversation involving the quartet’s players and the sound quality is excellent. I’d call this is a fine sampling of a highly able ensemble who on the evidence so far presented (this is their sixth recording) are as promising as any around.