The notes accompanying this disc include a passionate declaration of enthusiasm for Mendelssohn's string quartets from the cellist of the Artemis Quartet, Eckart Runge; it was through exploring this composer with their new first violin Vineta Sareika, apparently, that the group rediscovered their appetite for quartet playing.

Certainly there's no lack of energy, or enthusiasm, in these performances: the way the Artemis launch into the opening movement of the D major quartet Op 44 no 1 immediately signals that. All three quartets are approached in that same high-octane, technically immaculate way, which suits some movements better than others and seems to me to leave whole dimensions of their emotional worlds untouched.

There's undoubtedly anger in the F minor Quartet Op 80, written in the wake of the death of the composer's sister Fanny, but there's tragic intimacy there too that this driven approach never suggests, while the A minor Quartet Op 13, one of Mendelssohn's teenage masterpieces, is never given the space its lyricism really needs. For these, and the rest of Mendelssohn's quartets, the Talich Quartet's bargain set on La Dolce Volta remains hard to beat.