C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)

These gifted Zurich graduate string players joined forces in 2004: this is their debut recording, produced last July at the University of Arts concert-hall (the booklet PDF includes full technical details). Their musical responses are lightning-fast and in the Haydn ‘Fifths’ Quartet their slow movement is poised, the finale high-spirited. The great Bartók Fourth is exemplary as an abstract realisation (not unlike the Juilliards’), superbly played but with little of the ethnic colouring you hear with the Hungarian Qt [DG]. The sound is as fresh and clean as Swiss air, notwithstanding the resonance of the hall, with richness to the cello and clear decay of notes.