After hearing these lively and in some respects provocative performances it’s easy to understand why the American Miró Quartet (recipients of the 2005 Avery Fisher Career Grant) have been winning so many critical plaudits. Whichever way you react to this or that passing detail, one thing’s for sure: they never sound studio-bound or stilted. Yes, they can confound expectations – inspiringly intense in the Sixth Op 18 Quartet, perplexingly suave at the outset of No 4 – but that merely confirms that they treat each piece as a separate entity, which is as it should be. They also blend well as a group, with inner voices always kept securely in the frame.

The Miró’s approach to these epoch-making masterpieces is consistently animated and imaginative, often keenly driven though nearly always dispatched with a light touch – the opening of the First Quartet providing a good example of their fleet, urgent style. But they can relax, too, searching for deeper perspectives. Sample towards the close of the Adagio of the same Quartet, especially from around 8’59”, where powerful repeated chords preface a quietly throbbing viola line and the leader’s little espressivo cadenza just before the end, all so beautifully judged.

I liked the hot-foot Scherzo in the same work, a chance to sample the Miró’s sometimes individual way with dynamics, and I also liked the warm, flexible line at the start of the D major (No 3), though by now a minuscule mannerism that very occasionally creeps in elsewhere was beginning to niggle – a tendency to insert tiny points of punctuation, such as you’ll hear at around 1’13” and then again at 1’28” into the first movement. Also, bar-length rests tend to exceed their allotted time-slot (for example in the Menuetto of the A major Quartet, No 5, and the finale of the B flat, No 6). While the musical meaning of these gestures is fairly obvious, I suspect they would pall somewhat on repetition.

Surprisingly, the opening of the C minor Quartet (No 4), though well paced, sounds understated: the accents are all there but the effect is unexpectedly bland (compare the later Juilliards). Then again, the opening movement of the A major works wonderfully well, one of the happiest moments in the set in fact, nicely buoyed and with a sweet top line. The Menuetto’s trio features dramatically weighted sforzati and there are some very telling contrasts in the Scherzo of the B flat Quartet (No 6), with darting interchanges between players (at 0’25”) and a swift trio that’s virtually in tempo with the outer sections.

Were I to search out just one movement that typifies the Miró’s daring approach, it would be No 6’s finale – the deathly pale opening of ‘La Malinconia’ (such a keen premonition of Op 135’s finale), the elegance of the main Allegro and the distended pause as the leader makes his ‘false start’ after the return of the Adagio (6’50”). It’s obvious that the Miró Quartet have thought about the music and if I wouldn’t choose their superbly recorded set in preference to, say, the Takács, the (later) Juilliards or the Lindsays, their playing suggests huge potential. All that’s needed is a little time to settle.