These skilful, elegant performances of Schumann's first two string quartets were welcomed on their original appearance in 1977 by Max Harrison, and it is good to have them now available on CD. The music is fluent and well written, and if it can scarcely rate as the most characteristic Schumann, it is still typical of him in its fine craftsmanship and its lyrical ease. The A minor Quartet, in particular, shows how well Schumann understood the medium, not least in his feeling for how certain kinds of invention both arose from the nature of the quartet and could be developed uniquely by the quartet: the curious Adagio (not without its acknowledgements of Beethoven) is a case in point. The unusual scoring here is well managed by both quartet and engineers.'