…Mozart's final Quartet is not exactly the easiest of openers. Yet the Škampa Quartet delivers a beautifully natural and effortless account, revelling in the subtleties of contrapuntal interplay so characteristic of Mozart's last works. In Smetana's intense Second Quartet, the Škampa are particularly compelling... The second movement Polka is a notable highlight, projected with a really bold swagger.

Smetana's pain-wracked D minor Quartet is here give the wiry intensity and urgency it obviously demands but too rarely receives, taken to the point of roughness but never pushed over the edge.