Here is the latest offering from the Wigmore Hall’s home-grown label. If you didn’t know it was live, you might well not guess until the applause breaks in – the audience is impressively silent. This recital is taken from two concerts given by the Ysaÿe Quartet and forms an enterprising programme, sandwiching Stravinsky’s terse utterances between the sole quartets of Debussy and Fauré. The Ysaÿe’s take on Debussy is forthright and dramatic, pointing up the edginess of the opening particularly well. This is a warm, generous reading, emphasised by the recording which is relatively unanalytical yet close enough to capture a certain amount of heavy breathing. The pizzicato-dominated second movement, bien rhythmé, is freer than the Hagen’s steely interpretation, whose rigour I find very effective. In the third movement too, the Hagen are initially magically withdrawn, only slowly warming their tone as the movement unfurls. If the Hagen see this work as essentially modernist, the Ysaÿe take a more romantic view; in the last resort I prefer the Hagen, but this is impressive playing.

The Stravinsky pieces are a very different proposition, and the Ysaÿe well express the savagery of the first of the Three Pieces and the hypnotic chorale of the third. If you’re after a more sharply etched view, you’ll find it in the Chilingirian’s reading on Chandos. To finish, a heartfelt account of Fauré’s valedictory piece. It’s not a work to give up its secrets readily and in some places I felt the Ysaÿe were too hail and hearty for this ethereal creation – but that’s an effect exacerbated by the recording quality itself.