I can’t recall a Haydn quartet disc provoking such mixed feelings as this debut album from the young Jubilee Quartet. In an engaging booklet note, violinist Julia Loucks vividly conveys the players’ excitement as they immersed themselves in these three contrasting quartets, programmed here in reverse chronological order. The playing – questing, lean-toned (vibrato sparingly applied), thoughtfully phrased and coloured – bears her out. I enjoyed some movements without reservation: say, the expansive opening Moderato of Op 20 No 2, which combines a bold dramatic sweep with acute moment-by-moment characterisation, not least their sudden veiled pianissimo when the harmony dips flatwards near the end of the exposition. Here and elsewhere the players’ attentiveness to balance and inner part-writing brings out rhythmic and motivic detail that often goes for little. The same quartet’s final fugue, held down to a hushed, conspiratorial sotto voce, has an ideal mix of transparency, precision and buoyancy. Crucially, too, it made me smile.

That fugue is a rare movement that gives no scope for the extreme rhythmic flexibility that is a hallmark of the Jubilee’s playing. In the Minuet of Op 64 No 4 – a countrified Ländler in all but name – the teasing little hesitations enhance the music’s playful charm. But in the first movement their caressing and distending of the dusky pastoral tune at the end of the exposition sounds precious, all the more so on its several reappearances (the Jubilee are generous with repeats). There’s a lot to be said for playing a theme relatively straight first time round.

The guileless Adagio of Op 64 No 4 constantly threatens to lean backwards, with the players seemingly proceeding bar-by-bar. I hear nothing of Haydn’s prescribed cantabile e sostenuto. The worst casualty of all is the brilliant opening Vivace of Op 54 No 2, where, in their desire to create a sense of improvisatory freedom, the players neglect to establish a stable underlying pulse. For all its inspired eccentricity, this music should surely have more than a touch of concerto-like grandeur and flamboyance. Not here. All the more frustrating, then, that elsewhere in this quartet the Jubilee are at their imaginative best: from the second movement’s wailing gypsy lament, via the shocking, grinding dissonances of the Minuet’s Trio, to the finale’s fragile, healing song, tenderly floated by leader Tereza Privratska.