While not quite matching the dynamism and idiomatic accents of the Pavel Haas Quartet, the Cecilia String Quartet offer a purposeful and well-considered reading of Op 106. Right from the opening bars it’s obvious they mean business: the first subject is forceful and confident, the initial motif full of expectation, the arguments that follow illuminated by some piquant and nicely shaped phrasing. The sombre start of the Adagio is particularly affecting, while the scherzo is taut and exciting. The performance’s greatest strengths are exhibited in the finale, where the players display a firm grasp of the music’s uncommonly wide range of colours, though some of the pizzicato playing sounds rather blatant.

Maybe the Quartet’s pooled sound isn’t as distinctive as some, though the first of the two Op 54 Waltzes is warmly seductive. The half-dozen Cypresses are also well played, though the first of them (‘Death reigns in many a human breast’) opens to a touch of rhythmic ambiguity, possibly because the chosen tempo is a little on the fast side. Otherwise, I’d call this a pleasing, well-recorded programme, very good but not the best. For that you need, to name but three, the Pavel Haas, Panocha or Prague City quartets.