The Nova series is Harmonia Mundi’s new showcase for young talent. The five discs in the initial batch of releases range from choral music of the Portuguese baroque to 20th-century string quartets, and all the artists involved will receive promotional and logistic support for their concert appearances. Among them are the Quartet Gerhard, a group of Catalan musicians who named themselves after Roberto Gerhard, one of the most inexplicably neglected of all mid 20th-century composers. Not unexpectedly, 20th-century music features prominently on their debut disc.
The opening account of Schumann’s best known quartet, Op 41 No 3 in A minor, gives a good sense of the warmth and immediacy of Quartet Gerhard’s playing, but it’s Berg’s Lyric Suite that shows the group at their best, emphasising the music’s histrionic extremes and its rapid changes of mood in an irresistible way. After that, the 15 tiny pieces that make up György Kurtág’s Officium Breve, are presented unfussily, with just the right amount of detachment. At times the sound is too warm, a bit too resonant, but all the same it’s a hugely impressive debut disc.
