Recordings of Schumann’s three string quartets may not be anything like the novelties they were even a decade ago, but performances as thoughtful, vivacious and individually coloured as these by the young French-based Quatuor Hermès are always welcome. They perfectly catch the works’ position in the early history of Romantic chamber music, with the regular echoes of Mendelssohn’s early quartets in the faster music – which occasionally they make a bit too rhythmically relentless – and the foreshadowing of Brahms in the more introspective passages, such as the opening of the F major work, Op 41, No 2. Beethoven’s late quartets cast a long shadow over everything, but Quatuor Hermès are also, importantly, truthful to the qualities in the music that are very much Schumann’s own – the expressive impulsiveness, the unquenchable lyricism. These come together in a delightful performance of the last of the set, the A major quartet, Op 41, No 3.
