The debut disc from the South Korean-German Novus Quartet, who won the 2014 International Mozart quartet competition in Salzburg, frames Beethoven’s F minor work with early pieces by Webern and Isang Yun, neither of which was included in the composers’ own work lists. Webern’s Langsamer Satz is a gorgeous piece of late-romantic quartet writing, which seems to be close to becoming a repertory item now, but Yun’s First Quartet remains very little known. Completed in 1955, before he discovered serialism and moved from Korea to Europe to study, it shows the influence of Bartók and Ravel particularly, as well as the inflections of Asian pentatonic scales.
The Novus players show in the Beethoven that they are a formidable unit, forthright and coherent, if perhaps just a little too relentless at times and not yet prepared to relax enough to allow movements such as the Allegretto of Op 95 the expressive space they really need. That makes the account of the Langsamer Satz a bit chilly and detached, too, and their most engaging playing comes in the work by their fellow countryman, and in the arrangement of Arirang, the Korean folk tune with which they end.
