Here is a coupling that works on several levels. Programmatically, Sibelius’s “intimate voices” link up with the autobiographical driving force of both of Smetana’s quartets. Even more than with, say, Janácek’s or Berg’s quartets, of which the same might be said, that personal quality is bound up with physical affliction and with the frustration and protest this engendered. Go straight to the opening of Smetana’s E minor (No 1) and you can even hear a remarkable affinity with the opening of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto.

The Dante Quartet can scarcely be faulted in terms of passionate attack. Each performance is eloquent, intense and emotionally gripping, and not only at such painful high-points as the famous evocation of tinnitus in the finale of Smetana’s From my Life. Passages such as the same quartet’s alla polka and the corresponding movement in the D minor Quartet have an entirely appropriate earthiness and, overall, the urgency of all the fast movements is compelling.

In slower episodes a little more richness of tone would have been no bad thing, if only to set such passages in relief against the prevailing stoical moods. Even more impressive than the withdrawn quality the Dante Quartet find at key moments in Voces intimae would have been a stronger delineation of the sensuousness that Sibelius withdraws from. And while the third movement of Smetana No 2 is nothing if not con fuoco, I confess to feeling slightly bludgeoned by this stage. Partly responsible for that impression is a recording that’s stronger on clarity than bloom, which in turn renders occasional patches of less than ideal intonation (such as the opening theme of Smetana No 1) harder to overlook. Though the same comment could be made of the sound picture on the recordings by the Škampa and Smetana Quartets, their tonal allure and focus is superior.