Intelligent, beautifully blended playing from the young Vogler Quartet. In the Debussy, their lucid, comparatively objective manner put me in mind of the readings by the LaSalle and (more recently) Juilliard Quartets. What the Vogler perhaps still lack is the enviable concentration and sense of authority that both those distinguished groups bring to this music; for all the Vogler's clean-limbed virtuosity and undoubted commitment, theirs is a comparatively bland traversal of the slow movement, its pulse-quickening climax for once unaccompanied by any corresponding rise in emotional temperature. Similarly, I find their Janacek just a shade too level-headed: for all the formidable assurance on show, the full, searingly intense expressive range of Janacek's extraordinary vision is never quite adequately explored, its desperate passion on the one hand, its poignancy and tender vulnerability on the other.
On balance, it is Shostakovich's tersely enigmatic Eleventh Quartet that comes off best here, I feel. At times, there's a hint of self-awareness and a tendency to over-project (such as at the start of the ''Recitative''), but the spare-textured finale's unnerving inconclusiveness is very well captured. Recordings throughout are bold and informative, if just a little tiring on the ear.'