Whether you enjoy these performances is likely to depend on how you feel about Beethoven quartets played by a string orchestra. The technical standard of this disc‚ of playing and recording‚ is excellent‚ and Peter Oundjian‚ former leader of the Tokyo Quartet‚ directs with sensitivity and a firm idea of the expressive character of each movement. But for me the comparison between quartet and orchestra is overwhelmingly in favour of Beethoven’s original setting. In the opening fugue of Op 131 I was immediately aware of the loss of intimacy and of an emotional blandness; however expressively each line is phrased it lacks the plangent immediacy of a single voice. The much wider dynamic range of the string orchestra changes the character of the second movement‚ destroying its questioning‚ elusive nature‚ and in the recitative­style introduction to the following variations the appearance of solo instruments adds an unplanned and slightly unnatural extra dimension to the music. The Grosse Fuge has been played orchestrally more often than the C sharp minor Quartet‚ and one can see why; it’s less intimate in tone than the other late quartets‚ and the comparative blandness of the orchestral sound tones down what can sometimes appear excessively strenuous‚ especially in the first part of the movement. Yet even here one misses the sense of a difficult spiritual journey; moments of individual effort‚ like the wild‚ desperate second violin part (track 8‚ from 10'28") become swamped in the thick‚ sustained surrounding texture. With so many inspiring‚ deeply satisfying quartet recordings available‚ why bother with this?