It’s a slightly odd pairing, these two quartets of Dvořák – the butterfly-minded No 9, written when Dvořák was of a mature age but which was nevertheless rejected by its dedicatees (the Bennewitz Quartet) for its lack of quartet style, standing alongside the relief-sodden No 13, written almost as soon as he returned home from his sojourn in America. They do, though, frame the iconic American Quartet and those years he spent in the United States between 1892 and 1895, so, as fiercely patriotic as he was (and as homesick as he had been), this combination serves in many ways simply to illustrate the wilfulness with which he had not changed over those intervening years.

Although his output of chamber music was extensive and varied, it is shot with a strengthening thread of patriotism that may have served him well during his teaching sojourn in America, to challenge his students to be tenacious in developing their own identity, but which can leave those listening to his own music with a sense of staticness. However, the Zemlinskys play in a way that is so fluid and warmly rooted in rich tonal colour, and characteristic of their perfect ensemble (especially in the grating parallel chords of the opening movement of Op 9), that it is easy to hear why it is they are so representative of the Czech quartet tradition of groups such as the Bohemian and Smetana Quartets. They embrace Dvořák’s native melodies as if they are in their blood.