Scholar Marion M Scott described Op 29 as ‘a very beautiful work – beautiful both from its themes and the exquisite art with which the music and its medium are identified’. The Leipzig ensemble weighs in on the aestheticism thus described, the opening movement expansively delineated. The second subject has a relaxed ease but contrasts are not overly stressed. Largeness of design seems to appeal more than thrust and parry, though this aspect of the music is not neglected in the Scherzo, and is very much to the fore in the finale, where a taut Presto vies with two interludes in A major and C major, each marked Andante con moto e scherzo. These artists acknowledge the changes in mood, as indeed they do in the tenderly enunciated slow movement, Adagio molto espressivo. Overall, this interpretation complements the more dramatic view of the work by The Lindsays with Louise Williams.

Four years after writing the Wind Octet in E flat (posthumously numbered Op 103), Beethoven arranged it as Op 4. Though he had radically rethought the work, echoes of its original timbres and character – a serenade – remain. Wisely, the musicians don’t try to disguise them; or underplay the larger scale of the revision. Instead, they tread a fine line to recreate Beethoven’s expanded intentions. Pity the Fugue in D for string quintet (1817) wasn’t included too. Good sound and balance but missing the airy transparency of SACD, a system that lamentably MDG appears not to have used here.