This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Brodsky Quartet. Two original members remain from their early days as the Cleveland Quartet, founded in Middlesbrough – a remarkable achievement given the often swift turnover of personnel and the transience of groups in the quartet world. Even the seemingly eternal Emerson Quartet didn’t manage their half century.

To mark this milestone, the Brodskys revisit a work that has accompanied them throughout their momentous career, Schubert’s C major Quintet. Their earliest performances of the work were with Terence Weil, their mentor during student days; for this recording they are joined by 25-year-old cellist Laura van der Heijden, BBC Young Musician in 2012, representing, as the quartet point out, a similar age gap, while at the same time ‘proving that age is insignificant where there is a meeting of musical minds’.

The performance bears this out in its technical finesse, impeccable intonation and instinctive awareness of Schubert’s ability to manipulate time within a musical structure – that unique way a seemingly serene, unruffled line can be borne aloft by a fizzing, restless motor in the inner parts. Van der Heijden fits in seamlessly. The Quintet is a work of such mastery that it rarely fails to bring the best out of its players, which is precisely what we hear in this performance. Concentration is never allowed to sag, commanding the attention throughout, with no drop in intensity over this expansive canvas.

An encore would seem impertinent if it weren’t the magical Quartettsatz, the work in which Schubert announced that the only rules he would henceforth follow in instrumental music were his own. The same applies here in terms of fervour and sensitivity to colour. Even if classics both old and new retain their primacy, this is a recording that demands hearing.