The Karski Quartet, founded in Belgium in 2018, take their name from Jan Karski, a Second World War resistance fighter, whom they cite as a role model that every era needs, to quote from their mission statement. Relevant or not, it cannot be doubted that in making their recording debut with these four string quintets by Boccherini, they have made a bold start by promoting a composer who for far too long has been in the shadows of Haydn and Beethoven, who flanked his career, while another, Mozart, as whom he was almost as prolific, lived contemporaneously. On this showing, the Karski dispel that epithet of a contemporary who dubbed him ‘la mère Haydn’, a tag perpetuated by that Minuet being heard behind net curtains in the drawing room of the respectable Mrs Wilberforce in The Ladykillers.

Of the four quintets recorded here, only the G minor, G351, has received much attention. G361 in C is a premiere recording and the others are scarcely well known. The Quintet in F minor, G348, which opens this album, offers a bird’s-eye view of the composer as well as the style of the Karski, in which the players take it in turns to share different parts. Natalia Kotarba leads the F minor, her Classical bow guiding and enlightening her and their every turn of phrase, digging below the Mediterranean melancholy, and acknowledging in their graceful playing of the little courtly dance in the opening movement (at 1'15") the many years that Boccherini spent as a court musician in Spain. Her lovely playing adorns the Adagio cantabile, close in temperament to a sarabande, the con moto marking duly observed, while the Karski bring a light touch to the graceful Trio within the Minuet, with its characteristic major-minor modulations. In the finale the players relish the rough and tumble of the rustic dance episodes as the music moves from indoor decorum to outdoor playfulness.

Diede Verpoest leads the two-movement Quintettino in B minor, G350, the playing once more tapping underneath the surface melancholy. The dancelike Trio, with its imitation of hunting horns and pizzicato accompaniment, is deftly handled.

In the challenging outer movements of G351 the Karski come up trumps in the rhythmically and polyphonically complex first movement and go on to offer a no-holds-barred performance of the last movement, a compact sonata-form structure, not far removed in mood from Haydn’s Sturm und Drung works. With a tangible bloom to the recorded sound, this quartet and their indefatigable cello partner Raphaël Feye are musicians to watch. It was another cellist, Prince Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia – to whom Boccherini was chamber composer – who marked his score of this quintet ‘bene’, an attribute one might apply to the whole recording.