Shostakovich aside, few post-war string quartets can have made more of an impact on record than Dutilleux’s Ainsi le nuit. It seems like no time since I was writing the 2022 Gramophone Awards citation for Quatuor Ébène’s ravishing ‘concept album’ account. Dutilleux’s nocturne seems to have a uniquely liberating effect on an ensemble’s imagination, and the Takács Quartet have also made it the heart of a programme designed to be heard at one sitting, opening with a specially commissioned new quartet by Stephen Hough.

Les Six rencontres is a homage to Les Six, whom Hough sees as representing a stylistic opposite to Dutilleux and (the third piece in the programme) Ravel. Each of the six movements contains (Hough says) ‘only a trace of a memory’ of one of the six composers; experts on Louis Durey can draw their own conclusions but I tasted a hint of Honegger in the third, ‘À l’hôtel’. Taken as a whole these six miniatures make full use of the group’s virtuosity (and the sweetness of leader Edward Dusinberre’s stratospheric top register in particular), revealing new surprises on each rehearing.

And then we’re on into the Dutilleux and the Ravel: the first played almost as an extended prelude to the second and casting its moonlit shadows and restless atmosphere across the earlier work, to compelling effect. These are both powerful, brilliantly imagined interpretations, painted in bold, rich colours and shaped with flashing virtuosity. Forget any thought of the Ravel as a pastel-tinted watercolour; this is a symphonic reading, in which even moments of the utmost intimacy (such as Richard O’Neill’s viola solo near the start of the third movement) quiver with tension, sincerity and purpose. Exactly what we’ve come to expect, in other words, from the Takács Quartet.