It’s an entrancing work in orchestral and choral guise. But whether all the movements in The Seven Last Words lend themselves idiomatically to the reduced forces of a string quartet is a matter of taste. Haydn opens the gory scene of the Crucifixion with an Introduction of fortissimo double-dotted notes and gaping intervals. They ought to snap and scream however large or small the ensemble; and do so as played by the Lindsays. The PraΩák Quartet (violins separated) emerge soft-centred, not as crisp in their observance of the note values. Force is attenuated, as is its opposite in the first sonata, ‘Father forgive them’, the message of supplication weakened by a tempo too fast for Largo. Neutrality to emotional depth persists through the next two sonatas as well. But the despairing cry of ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’ in the fourth arouses in these musicians a new-found commitment to their interpretation. This is the moment of most intense anguish for Jesus, and the PraΩák, pacing the music at a genuine largo, don’t miss out on the torment of abandonment thus expressed. Nor do they underplay the contrasts in the fifth, tenderly poignant in the call for water yet wrenchingly dissonant in the distress at vinegar handed instead. All’s the pity then that an anticlimactic reversion to objectivity in the seventh obscures this Sonata’s spiritual essence, muted strings also sounding unusually hollow. The Earthquake? Well, it’s feeble, and the PraΩák isn’t to blame for that.