Wigmore Hall celebrates Irvine Arditti at 60

Celebrating 40 years of championing the contemporary string quartet, the Arditti Quartet concluded a day-long marathon with six quartets from composers around the globe. Polished beyond belief, they gave mesmerising performances.

The Arditti Quartet has adventurously championed contemporary repertoire throughout an illustrious career. Recent quartets from Haas and Abrahamsen are joined by Xenakis' Tetras at the New Music Dublin Festival.

The fifth Prom of the 2013 season welcomed Jonathan Nott and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra to the Royal Albert Hall, with the Arditti String Quartet as soloists. Nott and his orchestra became an award-winning partnership in 2010, winning the MIDEM Award for their recording of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.

The volume was that of a string quartet on steroids, but the sound was that of eight extraordinary string players each playing slightly different things. James Clarke’s 2012-S, for two string quartets, gave an explosive, subtle start to the Arditti and JACK Quartets’ joint Wigmore Hall recital this Monday.

As a non-composer, I always find it a little disconcerting when composers completely disagree with me about new music. And when I talk to two composers separately, and they offer matching opinions opposed to my own – as happened last night at the Wigmore Hall – I definitely end up feeling slightly wrong-footed.

Conlon Nancarrow may be most famous for his player piano studies, all of which were performed at the Southbank Centre last weekend, but his instrumental music is worth a listen too. His Third String Quartet is perhaps his most important effort for 'actual' performers rather than machines, but on Sunday night the Arditti Quartet also made a decent case for the First Quartet.