Of all the indisputably great composers, Schumann has had to contend with more brickbats than most. Now we’ve finally scotched once and for all the notion that he couldn’t orchestrate very effectively, there’s still much to be done in terms of the reputation of his choral music and – even today – some of his chamber music. Yet Op 41 is one of the most remarkable opus numbers in all chamber music, up there, I’d suggest, with Beethoven’s Opp 18 and 59 in cumulative impact. It’s all the more remarkable, then, that these were Schumann’s only published string quartets, sketched at his usual white-hot pace during June and July of 1842, that extraordinary year in which he followed illness with a flowering of chamber works that also includes both the Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet. But the idea of composing string quartets had been in his mind for some time: he first heard Beethoven’s Opp 131 and 127 Quartets in 1837, confiding, ‘I can find no words to describe [their] greatness…they seem to me…to mark the furthest limits yet attained by human art and imagination’. Rather than being daunted by their achievement, he seems to have been geared up by them and immediately proposed writing his own set of three.

The Zehetmair Quartet set the bar very high with their astoundingly fresh, supple readings of Nos 1 and 3, and it was no surprise when they scooped Record of the Year in the 2003 Gramophone Awards. But here, at last, is a seriously recommendable version of all three. And what a triumvirate these are: a Gramophone reviewer from a somewhat earlier age found fault with both No 1 and No 3, complaining that the slow movement of the First sounded like an arrangement of a piano piece (a rather bizarre comment, given how well its sustained textures work on string instruments), while the finale of the Third was ‘based on one of the most irritating tunes I know’.

One man’s irritating is, clearly, another [wo]man’s catchy, especially when played with such energy as it is by the Doric Quartet, matching the Takács for high-octane playing while adding an extra degree of rusticity, which isn’t inappropriate. The Zehetmair tend to play up the extremes in the music still more, notably in the febrile second and fourth movements of No 1, with their exquisite gradations of dynamic and timbre. But the Doric are equally colourful and give them a real run for their money. Their very opening to this quartet is beautifully managed – sustained, with a clarity of counterpoint pointing up the individuality of the four players as well as their collective finesse – before giving way to the lolloping Allegro that, as so often with this composer, attempts a carefree demeanour but doesn’t quite manage it. That ambiguity of mood is superbly conveyed by the Doric. And if their Scherzo is slightly less frenetic than the Zehetmair’s (who never let us forget that these quartets were dedicated to Mendelssohn), it’s very much in keeping with their vision of the music, with this movement packing a punch out of all proportion to its duration.

The Doric are not afraid of using portamento either, applied with particular elegance to the entwining melody that opens the third movement, which is here encased in warmly voluptuous sound. But beauty is never at the cost of musical direction and a sense of the pacing of the quartet as a whole.

It’s in No 2 that I find the Doric particularly compelling. The opening movement again has the warmth that they brought to the Adagio of No 1, while they superbly manage the rhythmic instability of the third movement, capturing its darting, febrile quality with precision and grace. Throughout, they relish the work’s Beethovenian shifts of mood, playing up Schumann’s unique combination of whimsy and fervour. And their ending of the quartet is a superbly adrenalin-pumped affair. These are performances that make you fall in love with the music all over again.

One of the most striking aspects of the Third Quartet is the way Schumann takes the lower instruments (the cello in particular) right out of their comfort zones, such as in the Allegro molto moderato of the opening movement. It is done to particularly poignant effect here in a movement that is as unstable as those Beethoven quartets that Schumann so admired. The shifts in mood are a real challenge, here superbly caught, such as the hymnic third movement which yields to more agitated writing, a gear-change that you simply don’t notice here, so naturally is it done. In the Doric’s collective hands, the finale skirts close to mania at times, not quite so close as the Zehetmair, perhaps, but still dangerously close.

The recording is immediate and present; there’s the occasional audible intake of breath but not enough to distract. And Nicholas Marston’s notes combine scholarship with readability and are particularly enlightening on the subject of Schumann and Beethoven. Only one question: what prompted the players to take their instruments for a walk in the woods for their photo shoot?