Among the various ensembles currently building towards complete Shostakovich quartet cycles‚ the Sorrels have much to offer that is distinctive and distinguished. They dare to follow the music into its extreme regions of glacial stillness or manic fury. And in the emotional spectrum spanning those extremes they identify readily with moods that others only dimly perceive. Their Ninth Quartet‚ placed first on the disc‚ strikes me as especially fine. Here the earthy‚ ethnic quality of the scherzo and finale jumps out at you as rarely on disc‚ and the interior lamenting of the second movement is well contrasted with the contorted agony of the fourth‚ where the multiple­stopped pizzicatos are real blood­on­the­fingerboard affairs. The whole conception is excellently paced and thought through‚ and the centrifugal force of the finale (one of the finest Shostakovich ever composed) is maintained to the very last note. The impact of the Sorrels’ playing is enhanced by close­up recording‚ which disguises the fact that the very finest available ensembles can take the demands of this music more easily in their stride. Not that this places the Emerson Quartet‚ for instance‚ in a higher category – the Americans have a tendency to glibness and their internal balance is frequently askew. But the Borodins‚ albeit sounding rather wiry on their Melodiya set‚ still lead the field for a comprehensive realisation of Shostakovich’s emotional gamut. The Sorrels bring a properly lacerating intensity to the Thirteenth Quartet‚ letting the craziness of the central jazz­march­passacaglia make its discomforting mark and staring the pain of the conclusion full in the face. Their Eighth Quartet is another daring account‚ with terrific bite in the allegro molto second movement and an effective tight rein on the following allegretto. But by keeping the first movement a few notches under the composer’s metronome mark they fail to make the best of their evident deep feeling for the music. The classic 1962 Borodin version shows how effective it can be to let the soloistic ariosos move forward‚ and the little heralded Rosamunde Quartet find shades of expression that tempt me to nominate theirs as the finest recent version of this much­recorded work‚ with the Sorrels not so very far behind.