String quartets at the Wigmore Hall (October 2013): Arditti Quartet and Diotima Quartet

Extract

The string quartet retains the pull of intimacy and the promise of prestige it has held for composers since the late eighteenth century. Unlike, say, the historically over-determined piano sonata, there is a degree of flexibility and adaptability in the form that has allowed a wide range of modern composers, from Xenakis to Shostakovich to Rihm, to make distinctive marks on it.