On track: Full of colour and vitality

You could be forgiven, in the first minute or so of the Takacs Quartet's final instalment of the Beethoven String Quartets, for thinking you were listening to a string orchestra.

The majestic chords that announce Opus 127 have something of the monumental to them, perfectly caught by this doyen of chamber ensembles in a top-notch Decca recording. Monumental but emphatically not museum-like; these performances positively pulsate with life.

As the mighty canvas of this E flat major work unfolds, subsequent Allegros are dispensed with just the right tensile energy. Respite comes in one of Beethoven's most ruminative Adagios, but the Scherzando teems with colour and incident and the finale is relentless in its momentum.

Little wonder that these final quartets of Beethoven are one of the greatest creations of Western music, encompassing a visionary landscape of sound, speaking a language that looked beyond its century into our own.

As well as the five late quartets and Grosse Fuge, written in the last three years of Beethoven's life, the Takacs have also included the Opus 95 quartet from 1810. This is the so-called "Quartett serioso", a score the composer realised had been "written for a small circle of connoisseurs".

It's in the great slow movement of the A minor Quartet Opus 132 that the Takacs reveal their unrivalled sense of poetry. This is an expansive "Song of Thanksgiving", graduating from the slowest of chorales through more skittish moods to its hushed final bars. For me the testcase is inevitably whether the musicians manage to hold together the highly fragmented contrapuntal writing in its last pages. They do, effortlessly.

The other challenge must be the Grosse Fuge, the great 15-minute movement that was removed from the Opus 130 Quartet because it was thought too demanding. Placed back in its intended context between the lyrical Cavatina and the tangy finale, it is the ultimate romantic statement.

The Takacs reveal their full strengths here, ensuring that rugged textures share their space amicably with sweet-toned contrast. Throughout there is an unswerving unity of purpose in which the character and contribution of individual players can still be savoured. Which is what chamber music is all about.

* Takacs Quartet: Beethoven, The Late String Quartets (Decca, 3 CD set, 470 849-2)