The personnel of the Talich Quartet is totally different from its founder-members of 41 years ago, and indeed from the artists who recorded the Janácek quartets in the mid-1980s (when they were criticised for their relatively soft-grained approach). The current first violin, Jan Talich Jr, is son of the Jan Talich who was violist on those earlier recordings (and, even more confusingly, violinist in the Talich Quartet previously and subsequently); the famous conductor Václav was the uncle of Jan Sr.

This new recording announces itself with a richness and directness of expression as remarkable as the previous Talich Quartet’s restraint (which, it has to be said, occasionally registers as mere circumspection). In fact these are performances to rival, even surpass, The Lindsays’ for sheer urgency. Sample the last two minutes or so of the Kreutzer Sonata for an abandon that’s almost guaranteed to set the pulse racing. Or, especially if you have somehow been immune to Janácek in the past, see if you can resist the eruptive passion in the third movement of Intimate Letters. Given the extraordinary problems with establishing authoritative texts for these pieces, there is no question whatsoever of a single recommendation. Perhaps the rather unremitting sweetness of Jan Talich’s tone would be the nearest thing to a potential drawback. Even so, this new issue surely has to figure on the shortest of future short lists.

Schulhoff doesn’t even get a billing on the cover. But his succinct, Bartókian First Quartet – dazzlingly inventive and light on its feet – significantly enhances the disc’s appeal. Thanks to the Talichs’ range of colour and expression, the Presto first movement fairly leaps off the page, and the skittish twists and turns of the succeeding Allegretto and the upfront peasant pungency of the Alla slovacca third movement are delivered with equal relish. After which the rhapsodic and, ultimately, anxiously withdrawn final movement makes for an unexpected but logical, even haunting, conclusion. There have been several highly praised CD recordings of the piece but these are now variously difficult to acquire (none that I know of is less than 10 years old); all the more reason to welcome this new, trenchant account. The vivid Czech recordings place the instruments rather further forward than usual but not inappropriately so in this passionately communicative repertoire.