Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | Ferneyhough

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 extraordinary JACK Quartet showcase music by Ruth Crawford Seeger, Christopher Trapani, Brian Ferneyhough, Julian Anderson and Horaţiu Rădulescu at Wigmore Hall.

One notable absentee from the Southbank Centre’s celebration of the post-war avant garde earlier this month was Jean Barraqué, a composer whose tiny catalogue of works, whilst not as well known as those of his contemporaries, is a vivid reminder of just how diverse the period was stylistically.

Irvine Arditti is turning 60 this year, but the real landmark perhaps comes next year, when his eponymous string quartet turns 40. The astonishing amount of good they have done contemporary music in this time deserves a ton of celebration in 2014.

On Sunday evening the JACK Quartet, seemingly ubiquitous in new music circles, performed an enlightening array of musical styles at (Le) Poisson Rouge, joined by rising young cellist Joshua Roman. The thoughtful programming was almost as chronologically diverse as it could have been.