Performer: Arditti String Quartet

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.

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.

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.

For five decades, Irvine Arditti has been at the forefront of new music for string quartet. Ahead of concerts at Suntory Hall, Tokyo, Arditti talks about his many collaborations with composers – including a long friendship with Toshio Hosokawa.