In the mythic language of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Arod – the name given to Legolas’s horse – means ‘swift’. It could hardly be more apt to this young Paris-based quartet. If you thought the Chiaroscuro’s spine-chilling performance of the Death and the Maiden’s tarantella finale at the edge of the possible, try the Arod. Their ride to the abyss is surely the fastest on disc. Yet this is no mere technical stunt. Imaginatively coloured, uncommonly wide in dynamic range, the Arod’s playing combines clarity of detail with a thrilling, desperate abandon. Going for broke, and beyond, they generate a truly cataclysmic climax where Schubert threatens rhythmic disintegration (from bar 393). At their lightning pace you doubt whether they will find an extra gear for the frenzied Prestissimo send-off. But they do.

In the opening Allegro the Arod marry febrile urgency with extreme flexibility. Their drastic slowing after the peremptory initial summons, and their tempo freedom in the development (where louder tends to mean faster), is provocative. Other quartets, including the Chiaroscuro and the more spacious Pavel Haas, integrate Schubert’s contrasts within a steadier overall pulse. But on their own terms the Arod succeed brilliantly, not least in their perfect balancing of Schubert’s filigree pianissimo textures. They go for maximum contrasts, too, in the Andante, tearing remorselessly into the hammering dactyls of the third variation and floating the G major idyll that follows with exquisite tenderness.

After the hurtling finale of the Death and the Maiden the Arod’s splenetic tempo for the Quartettsatz seems pre-scripted. The opening explodes like a supernova. Again, extremes of pace and dynamics, including a barely corporeal ppp, go hand in hand with extreme fluidity of pulse. While their performance is undeniably exciting, the Arod – more than in Death and the Maiden – can indulge the moment at the expense of the music’s overall sweep. To my ears their lingering hesitations where the music melts from C minor to A flat major (from bar 23) sound consciously applied rather than a natural response to changing harmonic colour.

Such reactions are, of course, notoriously subjective. Crucially, though, the Arod always compel with their questing imagination, both in the two masterpieces and in the C major Quartet, tossed off by the teenage Schubert in five days flat. The Arod are properly full-blooded in the orchestrally inspired first movement, gently point the ambiguity of metre (3/4 versus 6/8) in the Haydnesque Andante and conjure a lusty folkfest in the finale: a feel-good send-off to a disc that, like their superb Mendelssohn debut album (11/17), makes me eager to hear them in the flesh – sadly, a less realistic prospect today than those more innocent, pre-Covid times.