CD artwork can be terribly generic. Yes, these are Norwegian artists on a Norwegian label, and the moody monochrome seascape on the cover is beautiful enough. But it gives absolutely no idea of what a gloriously sunny disc this is; no hint of the life-affirming energy that races through every bar of these two joyous performances.

True, I expected good things from the Engegård Quartet, whose previous releases have matched a bracing clarity with music-making of probing intelligence. But I didn’t honestly expect them to throw caution quite so gloriously to the winds. The clarity and freshness are still there, and the fifth member of the team – the pianist Nils Anders Mortensen – shares those qualities; never audibly restraining himself in Schumann’s more brilliant flights but equally never forcing his way to the foreground. In other words, a true chamber musician.

The recorded sound has a slight bloom which suggests a big room, and if I had one reservation it would be that at moments such as the Quintet’s first movement cello-and-viola duet, or the slow movement of the Piano Quartet (and this is no aspersion on cellist Jan Clemens Carsen, who sounds luminous), they never quite find the intimate, confiding tone that is Schumann’s most touching trait. It feels like we’re hearing love poetry beautifully recited, rather than whispered one-to-one.

But that other, irresistible Schumann quality – his unstoppable boyish ardour – is there in spades. The Piano Quartet’s transition from hesitant introduction to headlong Allegro, the sense of the Quintet’s Marcia emerging, ready-formed, from silence, the witty exchanges in the same work’s finale and the sheer, bright-eyed joie de vivre of these performances simply disarmed all criticism. If this had been a live performance, I think I’d have cheered.