Parker Quartet Naxos8.570781 ****

György Ligeti's Second String Quartet of 1968 is a work in which the composer's innate sense of the theatrical, his fondness for a variety of curious musical mechanisms, and his engagement with the sometimes grinding extremes of the 1960s avant-garde all find archetypical expression.

His earlier quartets are equally interesting. The First Quartet ( Métamorphoses nocturnes) of 1954 was written before he escaped Hungary for the West, and although the influence of his compatriot Bartók is pronounced, the mature Ligeti can be felt, too. The Andante and Allegretto, written in 1950, represent a grappling with official strictures on musical style, which resulted in an unusually sugared effect. The Parker Quartet's performances are finely balanced, but the recordings at times seem artificially rich. www.naxosdirect.ie