Why did the string trio of violin, viola and cello never really catch on as a genre? Mozart, having written the defining work (K563), promptly abandoned it for other forms. Beethoven contributed a handful of trios but could not decide whether to follow the dance-imbued divertimento form of Mozart (in Op 3) or the four-movement symphonic form of his own quartets (Op 9). Haydn, the chamber composer par excellence, gave the form one try – very early in his career, among a series of works for the older combination of two violins and cello – before adding back the viola and creating the earliest quartet masterpieces. It would appear to require a particular temperament to conceive of a satisfying fullness of tone within the confines of just the three instruments of different ranges.

Schubert had a couple of goes before finding his feet in D581 from 1817. It’s audibly not a work of Schubert’s full maturity but he inhabits the form completely, offering music that gives all three instruments something worthwhile to do, while never sounding like a cut-rate quartet with something important missing. The Aviv Quartet (minus second violinist Philippe Villafranca) give a well-observed and considered reading, making just about the best possible case for this often ignored work.

The same observance of the subtleties of the score carries over into the Quintet, for which the Aviv Quartet are joined by the Israeli-American cellist Amit Peled. Everything is in the right place, intonation is by and large spot-on and no marking passes by without having some effect on what we hear. It’s a beautiful performance in many ways. What is missing, though, is the sense of the wildness heard on, say, the Pavel Haas Quartet’s Gramophone Award-winning disc, which palpably conveys the horrors the 31-year-old composer must have suffered during the last months of his life, as illness ravaged his body and mind. Schubert’s Quintet is one of the most harrowing masterworks in the chamber repertoire. Here the dying of the light feels as if it is being accepted with too little rage.