Acclaimed as the most important quartets since Beethoven, the six string quartets of B#65533;la Bart#65533;k offer a summation of the composer's compositional style and development, and they constitute one of the great monuments of twentieth-century music. This outstanding new volume unites the first two of Bart#65533;k's chamber masterpieces. The stirring first quartet, written in 1908, captures the composer's great stylistic rebirth, as the intense Romanticism of the opening movement gives way to a propulsive finale reflecting the composer's growing interest in Hungarian folk music. The second quartet, written during World War I, finds Bart#65533;k's creativity unimpeded by wartime privations. The three-movement work echoes the meditative qualities of the first quartet in its outer movements, but its lively central movement suggests the traditional music of North Africa. A combination of boldly disparate influences, it remains a work of astonishing force and originality.