With extremism once more an ever-present fact of life, the timing of this disc, featuring three string quartets protesting Europe’s previous great engagement with fascism, is acutely relevant. Viktor Ullmann’s Third, written just before boarding the train from Terezín to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943, contains a fiery fugue on a 12-note subject (he had attended Schoenberg’s lectures and studied with Zemlinsky, so this was no accident). Szymon Laks, who survived 30 months in Auschwitz, based his Third (1945) on Polish folk songs, banned under the Nazis. Both works are exploratory, Ullmann’s descending into the abyss, Laks clambering wounded out of it, and make an extraordinarily moving pair.

This is not the first appearance of Shostakovich’s Second (1944) – the largest and finest quartet here – on this label, nor in a context of contemporaneous music. The Pacifica Quartet recorded it in their ‘Soviet Experience’ cycle, received with muted enthusiasm in these pages. The Dover are the more compelling, though not as intense as the Emerson (or as well recorded) or the Borodin. The Shostakovich is central to the Dover’s conception, though, as it was the work they wanted to build the programme around. Its expressive complexity – the music wears a forced smile throughout – sits neatly with the Ullmann and Laks (different tyranny, same ambivalent terrain) and the Dover Quartet capture its range of moods very well.

The recorded sound, by comparison to its main rivals, is a little flat but every detail can be heard and the close miking does give a very intimate feel (especially on headphones). If the Dover do not outstrip the Nash Ensemble in the Ullmann, their pacing of the Shostakovich is convincing, although broader than the Emerson. They are technically excellent – listen to their dispatch of the pizzicato Scherzo of the Laks. Well worth investing in.