Nowadays listeners wouldn’t tear up the score of Mozart’s K465, as Prince Grassalkovics is said to have done, because the false relations in the Adagio introduction upset them. The Royal String Quartet may have tried to replicate the shock of these dissonances; but the softening effect of an unsuitably large recording venue vitiates the potency of music designed for an intimate acoustic, discolours timbres and blurs some passages.

Artistically, these musicians most often stand back from total involvement and lack inwardness of feeling, as in the Andante cantabile of K465, taken at a tempo closer to allegretto. Nor do they respond tellingly to the fast, bristling transitions to remote minor keys, starting in C minor, that begin the development of the finale. Conversely, a greater degree of temperament surrounds the first movement of Beethoven’s Op 95 but also heard is a lack of full control over the timing and shaping of phrases. Allegro con brio here is rather a frantic dash; tension doesn’t build up, it simply dissipates. And disappointingly, many a marking for soft tone in the following movement is ignored.

It isn’t all like this. Movements such as the Minuet and Trio of K465, the last two movements of Op 95 and, best of all, Haydn’s Op 77 No 1 in its entirety show that these young musicians are a budding talent. Accordingly it’s most likely that this disc, recorded in 2001, is not at all representative of their playing today.