Having impressed with their previous Shostakovich disc, the Jerusalem Quartet turn to three works directed towards increasingly personal ends. The Sixth Quartet is by no means all sweetness and light, yet the Jerusalem are rather too vehement in the first movement development and a touch coy in the ensuing intermezzo. They catch the pathos of the passacaglia third movement to perfection, but the finale is again overwrought – with little of the easeful inevitability the Sorrel (Chandos, 10/99) so poignantly convey. In the Eighth Quartet, the Jerusalem are right not to point up extra-musical associations, but the opening Largo is too passive, the Allegro too relentless and expressive nuance in the Allegretto awkwardly inflected. In the fourth movement they strike the right balance between formal control and expressive candour but the finale fails to clinch the design with the conviction of either the Hagen (DG, 8/06) or the Sorrel (A/01) – the finest recent accounts of this much-recorded piece.

It is with the Eleventh Quartet that this disc really comes into its own. A tribute to Vasily Shirinsky (second violin of the Beethoven Quartet), the contrasts between its seven brief movements are less remarkable than the motivic unity evident by the close. A quality fully borne out in a reading that is as aware of the music’s elusive spirit as the Hagen (9/95), and even more successful in seeing the work whole. Spacious if neutral sound, and a release that certainly confirms the Jerusalem as one of the most technically assured and tonally responsive quartets of today.