March 21, 2023

The Guardian praised “Metamorphosis Ligeti” with 5 star review

“Quatuor Diotima meet quartets’ challenges with accuracy and brilliance.” 

Metamorphosis Ligeti performed by Quatuor Diotima, received an outstanding 5 star review from The Guardian.

“They make enormous technical and musical demands, and the performances by the Quatuor Diotima meet their challenges with more accuracy and brilliance than any I’ve heard before. Every detail of the string writing, all informed by Ligeti’s phenomenal aural imagination, is crystal clear, the shape of each movement utterly lucid. And between these works the Diotima provide a glimpse of where Ligeti’s musical journey began; if the First Quartet belongs to what the composer called his “prehistoric” period, then the Andante and Allegretto, composed in 1950 while he was a student at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, presumably qualifies as primordial Ligeti, when Kodály was part of the stylistic mix as well as Bartók, and the influence of Hungarian and Romanian folk music was still clear.

Review by Andrew Clements

Read the full review HERE.