In terms of both quantity and quality, Schubert’s string quartets constitute a major body of work. A shame, then, that for the Chelsea Schubert Festival’s only concert dedicated to quartets, the Barbirolli Quartet could find room for just one.

On the other hand, you could argue that the nine minutes of his Quartet Movement are so condensed, so focused, that they are complete unto themselves. So it felt in the Barbirollis’ performance.

While Holy Trinity’s acoustic is bright and forward, the background hum of ventilation and traffic did few favours to quieter passages. Despite that, the Barbirollis’ approach favoured bold attack over pristine unity, and the music benefited.

If the players captured the fleeting moods of the Schubert, they also got the febrile, hyperventilating energy of Beethoven’s Fourth String Quartet. Not that everything was tension and stress: there was a lovely, open-hearted lyricism in the third movement, while the finale kicked up its heels with skittish energy.

Without Haydn’s example, neither Beethoven nor Schubert would have had such a firm foundation on which to build their quartets. It made sense, then, to open with the older composer’s String Quartet No 65, a work of infectious high spirits. There was a clear sense of shared pleasure in Haydn’s bundle of little surprises: a change of tempo here, a momentary pause there.

These musicians really search for the right timbre; at one slow passage in the final movement, their combined sonority had the enveloping warmth of an organ.

Debussy’s only string quartet made a fitting climax, its sense of structure looking backwards, its sound-world looking to the future. The Barbirolli Quartet invested it with an almost vocal quality, so that the piece unfolded like an opera without singing. Still young, these four women are already players to reckon with.

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