The Emerson Quartet’s expressive take on Haydn’s Seven Last Words comes with various details reinstated from the orchestral original, largely motivic material among the woodwinds that was lost in the scaling-down process. Try the Third Sonata with its brightened top line, (track 4, from 1'21") and compare it with the same passage in its original form at 1'19" (same track) with the Rosamunde Quartet. Then in Sonata 5, Sitio, from 2'00", track 7, on the DG, where the Emersons float a violin line over a bowed version of the opening pizzicato motive, as opposed to the simpler and in this instance far slower original (track 6). In the case of the Sixth Sonata Eugene Drucker’s booklet-note remarks on ‘restored material that seems to anticipate the main motive of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony’ but to my ears that association – it occurs at 5'39" in track 8 – is also common to the original.

More significant is the frequent downward transposition of the cello part – ‘since the cello and bass parts are usually given on the same line in the orchestral score’, as Drucker writes; the textual gain is sometimes quite striking. Some will question the decision to add a quartet transcription of the brief and baleful wind ensemble Introduzione that precedes the Fifth Sonata. The nature of the music is certainly altered: it becomes softer, more intimate.

So much for the altered text, though readers need not fear that the contemplative effect of Haydn’s narrative is at all hindered. What is more important is the Emersons’ deep involvement and response to the biblical prompts. Both leaders excel, Philip Setzer especially in the Third Sonata. And I had never noticed how strongly the painful phrase at 0'11" into the Fourth Sonata resembles a crucial woodwind phrase in the second movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 22, music composed two years before The Seven Last Words. Indeed, I sense a Mozartian pathos here, a restless quality that among modern rivals is unique to this performance.

As to comparisons, the Rosamundes more approximate a period-instrument style, with a drier tone and less vibrato, more stark though no less expressive in their relatively doleful manner. I’d also like to see back in the catalogue the Borodin Quartet’s 1993 Teldec recording (4/95), a truly remarkable performance, expansive and inward-looking. But the Emersons’ more cosseting approach gave me considerable pleasure. Whether those textural emendations hold their appeal over a longer period remains to be seen.