This young group, formed while studying at the Gheorghe Dima Music Academy in Roumania, has been building quite a reputation. Hailing from Transylvania, they claim a special connection with Bartók’s quartets. Such nationalist appropriation usually raises my hackles, but having listened enraptured I say fair enough.

This is wonderfully imaginative playing – a more relaxed approach than the high-tension of some recent rivals. The expansive tempi allow room for savouring some extraordinary textures and sonorities, letting sounds resonate and hang in the air. Their lovely tonal blend, captured in a typical Chandos warm acoustic, is in the classic East-European soft-grained tradition but doesn’t sugarcoat these modernist icons. The primal savagery is conveyed with foot-stamping energy...