Felix’s impassioned F minor quartet was the fiercely personal response to his sister’s death in 1847, only a few months before his own. The Takács Quartet frame it with equally committed accounts of a much earlier work, and Fanny’s own important contribution to the genre.

A new release from the Takács Quartet is guaranteed to be a highlight of the musical year, and this one easily exceeds all expectations. The ‘American’ quintet dates from Dvořák’s sojourn in the New World, the quartet from his return to old-world Prague; both are marvellous works, sounding here every bit the masterpieces they undoubtedly are.

Dvořák’s mature string quartets are masterly, all brimming with life-enhancing music, and Op 106 is no exception. The Takács Quartet gives superlative accounts of both this and the apt coupling by a young Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

The matchless Takács Quartet return to Schubert. Their first disc on Hyperion - his ‘Death and the Maiden’ and ‘Rosamunde’ quartets - received unprecedently lavish critical acclaim, acknowledging a new modern benchmark for these works. Now they turn to perhaps the most hauntingly beautiful of all Schubert’s chamber works, the String Quintet—completed six weeks before the composer’s death. Schubert included a second cello in the texture, creating a sumptuously warm sound, a cradling intimacy. Here the Takács players are joined by cellist Ralph Kirshbaum. Also recorded here is the ‘Quartettsatz’: a fragment - of the highest quality - of a String Quartet in C minor abandoned by the composer.