Tracing the metamorphoses | Bangkok Post: Arts & Culture

Musical styles never stay still. New ideas evolve from old ones, transformed by the artists who adapt and renew them to express specific personal visions. Here the Cuarteto Casals have created a compellingly programmed release of music that traces the transformations, or metamorphose, experienced by one of the last century's most influential styles.

METAMORPHOSES: BARTOK: String Quartet No. 4; LIGETI: String Quartet No. 1 (‘Metamorphoses nocturnes’), KURTAG: 12 Microludes for String Quartet (‘Homage a Andras Mihaly’). Cuarteto Casals. Harmonia Mundi, CD or download

Bela Bartok's was one of the 20th century's great originals. After passing through an early period of obvious influence from composers like Richard Strauss and Debussy, he developed an intense new style, deeply indebted to Hungarian folk music, that was so original that it became a new point of departure for the music to come.