This release is essentially a showcase for the Goldmund Quartet, and it’s hard not to warm to a young ensemble with its priorities so evidently in the right place. Haydn is still the indispensable touchstone for any serious quartet, and this debut disc covers both the beginning and end of Haydn’s quartet-writing career, with Op 33 No 5 falling almost exactly in the middle.

The Goldmunds make a beautiful sound, elegant and transparent, with a real sense that these four players are friends both on and off the concert platform. From the very opening of Op 1 No 1 – and the bright, buoyant feeling of an ensemble tugging at the leash – it’s clear that they take this music as seriously as it demands. Second violinist Pinchas Adt talks of ‘a lot of loving attention to detail’, and that’s a good summary of these performances: whether in the nutty pizzicatos of Op 1’s first Minuet, the artless opening smile of Op 33 No 5 or the refined blending of instrumental tone at the opening of Op 77 No 1’s great Adagio.

Reservations? Such intense carefulness can sometimes feel a little mannered – the group’s end-of-phrase ritenutos work better in the inner movements of Op 77 No 1 than the outer, and in the finale of Op 33 No 5 they’re positively arch. Don’t expect anything like the freewheeling fantasy that certain other emerging groups – Quatuor Zaïde (Op 50; NoMadMusic, 3/16), say – bring to Haydn. But these are still very attractive readings, and you’re never in any doubt that even the Goldmunds’ misjudgements are born of love.