The Wergo booklet carries a photograph of a twinkling-eyed Ligeti peering over a writing-stand like Mr Chad—the image suits his First Quartet to a tee. I know this piece is massively indebted to Bartok and in that respect is less mature than the Second, but it has long been a special favourite of mine for its sheer playfulness. Pages of semitone doubling, as in the scherzo section, may not look hilarious on paper, but in performance the effect is genuinely witty as is the drunken waltz which leads off a medley of dances later on. And I love the way the snake-like main idea creeps up on you every so often—you kick yourself for not having noticed it.
These moments are handled by the Arditti with just the right degree of slyness, stopping short of crude distortion. I laughed out loud at the outrageous realization of the viola part around 15'00''—Levine Andrade's pp spiccato (with mechanical precision'') is just distinguishable from a pitched squeaking door. Not even the excellent Voces Intimae Quartet (on BIS, coupled with other orchestral and instrumental works of Ligeti) can match that kind of inspiration.
If Ligeti is rarely far from sending himself up in the First Quartet, in the Second he is almost entirely in earnest. There are still passages such as the ''machine breaking down'' in the third movement which are done with elegance and charm, and the 80 or so unison demisemiquavers thrown into the finale are almost maliciously witty. But the predominant sense is of gentle neo-impressionism. What he has done here in effect is to climb inside some of the more bizarre of Bartok's textures (such as the second movement coda of his Second Quartet or the third movement trio of his Fifth) and open out a world of his own (which he has called micropolyphony). The delicacy of aural imagination required to bring this off can be gauged from the many unsuccessful attempts of imitators to 'do a Ligeti'. (Have you ever heard a string quartet do a musical sneeze, incidentally? If not, try 2'47'' in the third movement.) There is a small amount of background hiss and some heavy breathing which I didn't detect in the other quartet, and Ligeti doesn't get the ten seconds' silence he asks for at the end. But otherwise the recording quality is as first rate as the performances. Recommended to all but the most fanatical anti-moderns.'