This young French quartet founded in 2003 have already, to judge by this first recording, achieved an enviable level of accomplishment with beautiful tonal quality, remarkably well matched, allied to impressive dexterity and precision. The Italian Serenade shows the group at their best – a lively, elegant performance that highlights all the quicksilver changes of harmony, rhythm and tone colour, well served by the intimate, mellifluous recording.

The interpretation of the Schumann, too, is well considered and fine-sounding: it’s only when you compare it to the Gramophone Award-winning Zehetmair Quartet that you really become aware of a lack of expressive range – the Adagio doesn’t have the same intensity, the Scherzo isn’t as fantastical and the finale doesn’t generate the same headlong excitement. And there’s an annoying mannerism that spoils my enjoyment of many sustained, lyrical passages: the Amedeo Modigliani players apply bow pressure to each separate note of a slurred phrase, forgetting that the expression lies in the melody, not in the individual pitches.

The performance of the Mendelssohn is somewhat disappointing. Again, the playing is splendidly precise, the sound finely rounded; but Mendelssohn’s characteristic fire and dash, such an important feature of this quartet’s outer movements, is distinctly underplayed. Two years ago another young French ensemble, the Psophos, demonstrated what an enthralling, involving composition this is – showing Mendelssohn as a passionate romantic rather than the well mannered gentleman we hear on this occasion.