"What great music this is: pictorial, seductive, visionary!" was the verdict of BR Klassik, where the recording, released in March at the Pentatone label, was presented as Album of the Week.
The Quatuor Diotima has recorded string quartets from different creative phases for Metamorphosis Ligeti: Two movements for string quartet from 1950 - a youthful work still anchored in traditional sound worlds - then the far more modern String Quartet No. 1 Métamorphoses nocturnes from 1954, reminiscent of Bartók, and finally String Quartet No. 2, written in 1968, with which Ligeti identifies himself as an avant-gardist. The album thus fulfils what its title suggests and shows the metamorphoses of the composer, who constantly questioned and reinvented his own artistic means.
