Bela Bartok: String Quartets Nos. 1, 3 & 5

From the opening funeral dirge of the First Quartet to the incandescent frenzy that concludes the Fifth, this disc offers a genuine panorama of the Bartókian universe. A world unto itself, constantly stamped with the heritage of Hungarian folklore so dear to the composer: two years after a first volume devoted to the even-numbered works (nos. 2, 4 and 6), the musicians of the Jerusalem Quartet expertly complete their recording of a key cycle of modern chamber music, a musical saga drawn on the scale of a lifetime!