Quatuor Agate owe their name to Brahms – taking it from Agathe von Siebold, to whom he had been engaged and whose name he embedded in his G major string sextet Op 36 – so it’s appropriate that the Paris-based group’s debut recording should be of Brahms’s three string quartets. Since they formed in 2016, the Agate have won a number of prizes and awards, including one from the Young Classical Artists Trust in London, and hearing their warm, wonderfully refined sound, impeccable intonation and punctilious attention to detail, it’s easy to understand why they have made such an impression.
