The Arditti Quartet is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and they are featured on the new Col Legno CD, with four premiere recordings of works by Rebecca Saunders, Benedict Mason, Luke Bedford and John Zorn. Each of the four pieces is a mini-masterpiece in its own right and the Arditti Quartet performs them all with the virtuosity and commitment they are renowned for. The result is a CD of powerful, gripping and great music!

 “These four must be stopped…,” Paul Griffiths wrote more than twenty-five years ago about the, even back then, widely praised Arditti Quartet, referring to these excellent musicians’ gift for making wonderful music irrespective of the quality of the actual composition. As regards the present album, though, we need not worry about this dilemma, given that each of the compositions by Rebecca Saunders, Benedict Mason, Luke Bedford and John Zorn is a little masterpiece in its own right. The Arditti Quartet has not only helped to shape our perception of contemporary music over the past forty years but, thanks to their accumulated experience, these four musicians also exemplify the future of this fascinating musical universe.