This programme by the Berlin-based Artemis Quartet came close to defining a century and a half of tradition in only two works. Brahms's Op 67 quartet begins sounding like Haydn; the opening of Schoenberg's Quartet No 1 sounds like Brahms. And the Schoenberg is right at the cliff edge where romanticism stands ready to leap off and annihilate itself.

An epic programme in some ways, then. And yet the Brahms came across as a little constricted. Perhaps this was partly because the Artemis players aren't as familiar with the venue as some quartets; the Wigmore's glowing acoustics can accommodate far quieter sounds than they ventured here, without them losing any immediacy. A couple of reflective moments had magic, but these were carefully calibrated - there were no real surprises. And though the warm evenness of the blend between their instruments was notable from the start, the downside of this was that first violinist Natalia Prishepenko couldn't dominate comfortably in the bravura passages.

However, the uniformity that might have seemed a weakness in the Brahms was something that made the Schoenberg come together searingly, in a performance that seemed to take us on a long and eventful journey. This continuous 45-minute score is symphonic in scale and astonishing in its scope, and in lesser hands it could easily seem like a baffling sprawl. Yet the ability of the Artemis players to dovetail into one another, to function as one amorphous instrument, reinforced a sense of clarity and purpose that didn't slacken once. The quiet, spent intensity of the close set the seal on an extraordinary performance of an extraordinary work.