These quartets are of great historical importance because Zmeskall was a colleague of Haydn and Beethoven, and Beethoven's best friend. He was also that rare species, a Lutheran in Vienna. (That was a crime, but he had diplomatic immunity.) These two quartets are among his last, and therefore, presumably his best. They are skilfully written, with a fairly busy texture of polyphony and heterophony, pleasant melodies and harmonies, leaving a rather sweet impression without a lot of tension to be resolved. "Period" performance on antique instruments tuned flat probably lowers the voltage further. Zmeskall was a cellist, and the cello gets a share of the melodic material, but with far less imagination than either Haydn or Beethoven. The quality of the performance and engineering is excellent.