Arditti Quartet - Ruzicka: String Quartets (1999)

The Arditti Quartet, tireless proponents of the experimental and the recondite, received in June '99 the coveted Siemens Prize, Europe's most prestigious contemporary music award.The painstaking care they expend upon Peter Ruzicka's post-modern compositions, fragile music-about-music, is further evidence of why the Ardittis are one of the most highly-acclaimed string quartets of our time. On Ruzicka's 4th quartet, they are joined by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the world-famous lieder/opera singer taking an unfamiliar role as speaker, reading texts by Paul Valery, Peter Handke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Theodor W. Adorno, Dieter Schnebel, Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann, Cesar Pavese, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, which Ruzicka scatters amid the notes.