A few months back I sat on the jury of a string quartet competition and listened for two days to a succession of student ensembles playing Beethoven’s Op 18 No 5. I hadn’t realised how an experience like that shapes one’s ideas about what constitutes a compelling interpretation (as opposed to a merely a fine performance) until I listened to the Chiaroscuro Quartet’s recording of the same work. My instinct – after noting the precision and high finish of the ensemble-playing and the crystal-clear recorded sound – was to reach for my adjudicator’s pencil and scribble ‘more personality, please’.

Rob Cowan found the same issues when reviewing the first instalment of the Chiaroscuro Quartet’s Op 18 (12/21): a clean, energetic low-vibrato style with real technical polish and an impressive dynamic range, but an unavoidable sense that these four virtuoso players – while scrupulously observing the letter of the score – are skimming the surface of the music. It’s the little things: places such as the transition into the coda of No 5’s slow movement, where you hope for magic and get, in its place, a finely gauged drop in the dynamic level. Or the ‘Malinconia’ introduction to the finale of No 6; beautifully voiced but coming from the head rather than the heart.

In fairness, the clockwork energy of that same work’s opening movement fizzes rather deliciously at the Chiaroscuro’s bravura tempo, and the Hungarian-style finale of No 4 has a terrific kick and swing (if only they could have got their fingers a bit bloodier in the surging melodies of the first movement: this is Beethoven’s only quartet in C minor, after all). But overall, while there’s certainly a place for clean, bright, precision-tooled quartet-playing, I’m not convinced that it’s in Beethoven’s Op 18.