What a glorious work the First Piano Quartet is, here given a reading that abounds in warmth and geniality. Sample the Scherzo, for example, which shimmers and darts, seeming to have all the time in the world when it comes to detailing, though these players are no slouches tempo-wise. Also very effective is the restraint of the strings in the heartbreakingly grave slow movement, exquisitely scored by Fauré, adding the strings one by one to the piano’s sonorous chords, in a unison line that subtly deepens the intensity of the emotion; by comparison, the Beaux Arts/Kashkashian are more open-hearted here but never garish. And the finale again shows a compelling degree of reactivity between all four players and a silvery sound from Le Sage in the silky triplet accompaniment. Temperamentally, it’s a reading closer to the restrain of Domus than the more emotive Capuçon/Caussé/Dalberto performance, which was, in any case, bedevilled by a very boomy acoustic.

After listening to Capuçon/Caussé/Angelich in the Second Quartet, again compromised by the murky recording, it’s a pleasure to turn to this new one, where every note of the agitated piano-writing is audible and which is more fingery in effect even than Domus. This is a tougher cookie, interpretatively, than the First Quartet, from which it is separated by a decade. The more veiled style characteristic of Fauré’s writing at this time is particularly evident in the slow movement; Le Sage and Co convey perhaps a greater ambiguity of mood than the more straightforwardly lyrical Domus.

The new reading again offers tremendous clarity in the Allegro molto second movement, the string pizzicatos ripping through the piano’s incessant movement, the dryness of which lends the music a piquant modernity. And in the tumultuous finale the piano is more forwardly balanced in Domus’s reading, though Le Sage’s detached phrasing won’t be to all tastes. But if it is, then this is a very recommendable new reading of two masterpieces of the piano quartet repertoire.