With the Emerson Quartet we’re guaranteed a high level of technical accomplishment and the group’s liking for closely miked, well defined recorded sound helps to demonstrate just how polished the playing is. In the Grieg, a powerful, emphatic style highlights the music’s passionate intensity. Whereas some quartets – the Vertavo, for instance – treat the canonic introduction to the finale as a meditation, with the Emerson it’s arresting and dramatic.

Back in 1937 the Budapest Quartet set a high benchmark for recordings of the Grieg; their performance, smoother, more expansive and lyrical than the Emersons’, conveys the work’s passion in a different way. Compared with more recent accounts, the Budapest Romanze initially seems very slow but the lingering, nostalgic atmosphere draws in the listener in a way that the brightly lit Emersons fail to do. Elsewhere, though, the Emersons’ compelling account fully matches the Budapest in brilliance and strength of feeling.

The Budapest also left a fine, if surprisingly speedy, recording of the Sibelius, and here, too, a smoother delivery gives some advantages – in the first movement’s continuous quaver movement, for instance, where the Emersons’ intense projection prevents the music flowing easily. But taken as a whole, it’s a magnificent performance, with a deeply felt Adagio and, in the finale, playing of such poise, crispness and vitality as to outpace even the 1930s Budapest. The short, powerful Nielsen threnody, played with intense commitment, makes a natural bridge from Grieg’s colourful, romantic style to Sibelius’s more disciplined world.