Ligeti made his mark on the 20th century…The First…reveals deep understanding of Bartók’s quartets…The Parker looks past the grit and embraces Ligeti’s confidence in the medium. The two movements from 1950 serve as footnotes, revealing yet another easygoing non-modern composer from the century’s start. © 2012 La Folia Read complete review

The Parkers on this Naxos CD caused the Tocaros to jump and dance about Funk’s largish listening room to the delight and astonishment of all assembled. They are as good on Ligeti as the Pacificas are on Carter, which is saying a lot.

Ligeti’s quartets are among the best modern music there is—the next step (forward? sideways? up?) from his countryman/predecessor Bartók’s; and this is the best recording I’ve heard of them. This album is a great introduction to the composer—and the sound is as good as the musicianship and music. © 2012 Positive Feedback Online Read complete review

MusicWeb International Recordings of the Year 2010

This young quartet has nothing to fear from the competition in these works, either in the Bartókian first quartet or the more radical second. The early Andante and Allegro is a balm to the ears after the quartets and a good way to conclude this bargain.

MusicWeb International Recordings of the Year 2010

This young quartet has nothing to fear from the competition in these works, either in the Bartókian first quartet or the more radical second. The early Andante and Allegro is a balm to the ears after the quartets and a good way to conclude this bargain.

This young quartet has nothing to fear from the competition in these works, either in the Bartókian first quartet or the more radical second. The early Andante and Allegro is a balm to the ears after the quartets and a good way to conclude this bargain.

This is very much music of its time, and it has not aged well.

The program closes with the very early Andante and Allegretto, a couple of lovely pastoral scraps from 1950 written when the composer was just an innocent lad of 27. This piece has absolutely no intimations of what was to come. These are two gentle and quite British tonal movements that sound neither Hungarian nor modern, but are definitely useful as drop-the-laser fare. The Parker Quartet comes out of the Quartet program at NEC, and has the measure of all these stylistically varied pieces.

Listening to these quartets makes one regret all the more that Ligeti did not fulfill his plan to compose a third quartet, as Richard Whitehouse noted in his accompanying detailed essay. Nonetheless, one can be thankful for the two outstanding works on this disc. They give ample evidence of a real successor to Béla Bartók in the genre. These quartets have been recorded a number of times, but the Parker approach these works as if newly discovered. My first exposure to them came via the Arditti Quartet in Sony’s Ligeti Edition, an invaluable compendium (later taken over by Warner as the Ligeti Project) of the vast majority of the composer’s oeuvre. I still value the Arditti’s accounts highly, as I do those of the younger Artemis Quartet on Virgin. Now we have the first “bargain” set by another young group that I had not heard of before. Right off, I will state that the Parker Quartet has nothing whatsoever to fear from its illustrious predecessors. It was also good to include the early Andante and Allegretto, even if it shows little in the way of hallmarks of the mature Ligeti. The quartets belong to two distinct stages in the composer’s life: the first from his “Hungarian” period before he left for the West, and the second from his more experimental years spent in Germany. How fortunate it would have been if Ligeti had given us an example late in his life when his compositions became a synthesis of the experimental and the more folk-oriented music of the earlier period. Alas, it was not to be.

The Quartet No. 1, while owing no small debt to Bartók, has Ligeti’s identity firmly stamped on it from the beginning. As Whitehouse points out, it is in one continuous movement that can be divided into anywhere from four to eight sections. The Artemis Quartet’s recording has twelve tracks for the quartet and the Arditti eight, while the present one divides the work into four sections. I can think of no better introduction to Ligeti than this work, unless it be his Musica ricercata for piano or the Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet, an adaptation of six of the piano pieces from the former work, both written in the period of the quartet. Indeed, Ligeti quotes the Vivace energico from the Musica ricercata or the Presto ruvido movement from the Bagatelles, the wind version of that movement, just before the “one minute mark” on the third track, following a delightfully humorous waltz. There is much comedy typical of this composer throughout the quartet, and the Parkers relish the humour without overdoing it. Their many slides are more pronounced than those by the Arditti, their pizzicati more vehement, and their pauses longer. They are obviously having a great deal of fun with the work, whereas the Arditti and to a lesser extent the Artemis project greater experience with the work, not to say that either quartet is bored with it. Having heard this quartet many times in the past, I was struck by their sheermore....

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