Belcea Quartet / Presland, Wigmore Hall, London

Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) is generally reckoned to be Poland's greatest composer after Chopin, and at least a handful of his scores have attracted distinguished advocates over the decades. Yet his output has never quite secured its place in the standard 20th-century repertoire. Cue for Paul Kildea, the Wigmore's outgoing artistic director, to programme another five-event Szymanowski mini-fest to air all the instrumental music and songs.

Indeed, as the much-lauded Belcea Quartet eased its intense, tremulous way into the fragrant opening pages of the String Quartet No 1 in C, Szymanowski already seemed to have triumphed. Then, with the onset of his more busily chromatic development section, the doubts resurfaced. Were the basic ideas memorable enough to justify such elaboration? Did Szymanowski's characteristic middle-period amalgam of the aesthetic refinement of Ravel with the fevered spirituality of Scriabin ever quite transcend its influences?

Corina Belcea's alternately languorous and dazzling account of the lengthy violin and piano triptych Three Myths, accompanied with resonance and flow by Carole Presland, raised another problem. Page by page, these evocations of "The Fountain of Arethusa", "Narcissus" and "Dryads and Pan" comprise one exotic texture after another, but it is difficult to discern any formal design behind their rambling succession.

Belcea and Presland returned after the interval with a transcription of the more shapely, plaintive contours of Roxana's Aria from King Roger, touchingly done, and of Szymanowski's uncomfortable attempts to add accompaniments in his own perfervid style to the largely diatonic solo violin style of Paganini in Three Paganini Caprices.

And so, back to the Belcea Quartet in Szymanowski's String Quartet No 2. This really does begin with a memorably wide-spanned melody for first violin doubled by cello against remote rustlings for second violin and viola, and, in its Scherzo, turns earthily folkloristic, with virtuoso pizzicato writing for cello. Here the doubts centred rather on the Belcea Quartet itself.

Not that these four young players lack an iota in conviction and skill. On the contrary, their command of expression and texture, of dynamics and colour, and their sheer power of projection, are now so overwhelmingly vivid that, occasionally, one longs for a more contained, even casual approach to offset the high-gloss cultivation of it all.