It is unusual to see a pairing of what are the two most important string quartets of Schubert, and even more unusual to see this mighty pair offered as a live recording. The remastering of the concert has inevitably deadened the sound somewhat (but without totally removing the audience noise). This isn’t ultimately necessarily a bad thing – it brings an immediacy to the recording that makes it feel like a live performance at home which, given that there are obvious elements to the performance that would have been ironed out in a studio recording (it is a very top-heavy sound, and there are some bumpy runs and cadences that don’t quite come together that jar far more on CD than in the concert hall), are entirely appropriate.

There is very little of the manic oscillation between the joy and despair Schubert must have been feeling when he wrote these quartets, coming, as they did, after he had been told he was ‘a man whose health can never be restored’. The wilfulness of the piece’s key of A minor to triumph over all is gloriously overridden by A major at the end but, without a strong sense of the battle on the way, it feels like a pyrrhic victory. Ultimately, the problem with this disc is that it doesn’t disarm one with its beauty in the way that Schubert ought to. But the question is really whether it is ever possible for a live performance to do that on disc for music like this in any case.