LIGETI  String Quartet No. 1, “Métamorphoses nocturnes”

Insatiably curious and constitutionally incapable of falling into a rut, 20th-century Hungarian composer György Ligeti continually reinvented his musical language over the course of his long life. He once said that “all cultures, indeed the whole wide world is the material of art!” Early in his career, Ligeti concentrated on distilling his musical language to its essence, as illustrated by his first quartet, which unfolds organically from a basic four-note motif.

MENDELSSOHN  String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 44, No. 1

Felix Mendelssohn wrote the first of his six numbered quartets in 1827, at age 18, and the last more than 20 years later. The D-Major Quartet falls squarely in the middle and shows Mendelssohn’s preternatural ability to blend classical poise with romantic passion and freedom. By turns brilliant and introspective, the score contains hints—especially in the writing for the first violin—of Mendelssohn’s great E-Minor Violin Concerto, composed some six years later.

SHOSTAKOVICH  String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68

The second of Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets followed hard on the heels of his grim, death-haunted Second Piano Trio. Yet the resolutely determined and fundamentally life-affirming character of the A-Major Quartet has more in common with the Russian composer’s “Leningrad” Symphony, the work that had catapulted him to international fame three years earlier.