Charles Burney hit the nail on the head. The Op 76 quartets, he wrote, were proof of Haydn’s enduringly youthful creative spirit; music that sounded as if its 66-year-old composer ‘had expended none of his fire before’. There’s still no more rewarding challenge for an ambitious string quartet, and when the Chiaroscuro Quartet recorded the Op 20 quartets a few years back (A/16, 9/17), Richard Wigmore heard a group who ‘combine refined ensemble and intonation with an audible delight in the music’s richness and inspired subversiveness’.

The same qualities are in evidence as the Chiaroscuros leap a generation to the ebullient public statements of the Op 76 set. Using gut strings on (mostly) 18th-century instruments, these are certainly historically informed performances. The group really don’t hang around with the big chords that open No 1; accompaniment figures bristle (the articulation throughout is admirably crisp) and the minuets of No 1 and No 2 bound forwards as if spring-loaded.

Alina Ibragimova’s gleaming sound bathes the top of the ensemble in sunlight but she’s never more than first among equals, and Emilie Hörnlund’s lovely matte viola tone, in particular, gives a real clarity to the trenchant motivic working in No 2’s first movement. If the slow movements can at first feel a little austere (the famous ‘Emperor’ melody in No 3 is a case in point), the understated poise and intelligence of the playing deepen with repeated listening.

But they know how to smile, too – listen to the group’s subtle comic timing near the end of No 1 (they even change the tone-colour of the accompanying pizzicato). The overall effect is simultaneously fresh, thoughtful and wholly life-affirming. The Chiaroscuros’ account of the remaining three Op 76 quartets can’t come soon enough.