Twenty years ago Shostakovich quartet recordings came as integral sets or further accounts of the ubiquitous Eighth, so the dissemination of the cycle as a whole has been a positive development. And, as one might expect from Austrian and Russian musicians, these discs reveal marked differences in their approach to the music.

For the Hagen, the Third Quartet is tautly argued, pursuing a trajectory from playful disquiet to calm resignation in a decisive response to the composer’s equivocal Ninth Symphony. Notably slower only in the finale, the Kopelman align it with the wartime instrumental works that preceded it, bringing greater weight of tone and an expressive vehemence that makes heavy weather of the opening Allegretto – its headlong coda persuasively rendered by the Hagen as a springboard into the ambivalence of the intermezzo.

Here and in the febrile Scherzo, they elicit a keener response than the Kopelman, who yet plumb greater depths in the Adagio. Come the finale, however, and the Hagen control tension over its rondo design more intently: their searing intensity in the climax and pained evanescence at the close more affecting than the forced pathos of their colleagues.

The recorded sound plays its part in the ‘feel’ of these performances – clean and well focused for the Hagen, warmer in ambience for the Kopelman but with a degree of resonance that diffuses impact in the densest tuttis. Their more expansive approach to the central Lento succeeds on its own terms but the Hagen’s greater restraint works better in the overall context of Shostakovich’s most circumspect work for the medium. Here and in the Eighth Quartet they convey a more acute response than the lucid but often too detached Yggdrasil, though the implacability of the following Largo and the muted despair of the outer movements come across even more strongly with the Sorrel – the finest modern version.

The Nimbus disc concludes with a persuasive reading of Prokofiev’s Second Quartet, though the Chilingirians’ account (Chandos, 7/91) is scarcely less convincing and finds a greater finesse to broaden the expressive range of this deceptively unassuming work. A disc most likely to appeal to admirers of these musicians, then, whereas the Hagen is a worthy follow-up to their disc of Nos 4, 11, and 14 (DG, nla) in a cycle worth completing.