When you have an intelligent, technically almost superhuman ensemble like the Emerson Quartet, playing with obvious feeling for the music, reservations about quartet-style fly out of the window.

Technical finesse has always been a given with this group, and as ever their playing has a sureness and ease that leaves most ensembles behind. Their reading of the ebullient Third Quartet is particularly fine, with the leader imbuing the ravishing second-movement melody with teasing little portamenti. And in the finale, lyricism is combined with an infectious élan.