On track: Formidable ensemble a perfect match for Schubert

When Takacs Quartet toured this country in 2004, violist Roger Tapping announced he was leaving the group.

Over the past year, this acclaimed ensemble has seen Geraldine Walther taking over viola duties and a move to the English Hyperion label, celebrated with a new Schubert CD.

The coupling of the A (Rosamunde) and D minor (Death and the Maiden) Quartets shows that the new Takacs is every bit as formidable a force as its previous incarnation.

When trying to analyse the special character of this group, one inevitably comes back to the extraordinary tonal range that these four musicians can invoke.

As well as mighty tutti that make you realise why Mahler couldn't resist arranging the D minor Quartet for string orchestra, there are passages of the utmost tenderness, reserved in dynamics without sacrificing any intensity of emotion.

Chris Hazell's recording of these performances, made in St Georges, Bristol, catches this range, as well as the way in which the musicians have an unerring sense of what instrument should be coming forward in the texture at any point.

And so we have ample opportunity to enjoy the playing of Walther and the second violinist Karoly Schranz.

It was Schranz, together with cellist Andras Fejer, who founded the group back in 1975 when it soon gained a reputation for interpretations that reconciled refinement and visceral energy.

The Death and the Maiden Quartet, in particular, pushes all rivals aside, from the sheer authority of its opening and careful characterisation of the second movement's variations to the urgency of its final Tarantella.

Listening to this, one is amazed that Mendelssohn once criticised the score for faulty structure. Ironically, our own Jane Campion used this Quartet as a recurring musical motif in her film Portrait of a Lady.

It's the A minor Quartet that reveals the utter subtlety of the Takacs sound, from the whispering lower strings in the first movement to the glimmering triplets springing out of the final pages of the work. Once again a slow movement is lifted as much by tone as by tempo.

A CD which encourages hope that this group will be looking at another Schubert coupling before too long.

* Schubert, String Quartets (Hyperion CDA 67585, through Ode Records)