In 2003 the Belcea Quartet recorded a nerves-on-a-knife’s-edge account of Brahms’s C minor Quartet (Op 51 No 1) for EMI. Here, more than a decade on, their conception retains its essential ferocity, though without quite so much exhausting franticness...this new set offers sufficient insight and delight to be worthy of any devoted Brahmsian’s attention.

What a feast this is. The Belcea’s textures are so rich, you would think a larger force of strings was playing. And in the quintet’s glorious andante, their eloquence almost rivals that of the great Busch Quartet.

[The Brahms quartets] are outpourings of angst, ardency and resolute jubilation, all characteristics that the Belceas do brilliantly. This recording features intense and wonderful quartet playing: lucid and agitated, sleek and muscular, with Corina Belcea’s silvery-lean first violin sound balanced by the huge warmth at the centre of the ensemble from violist Kzystof Chorzelski.