The high point of the evening was the group's performance of Ligeti's String Quartet no. 1 (M�tamorphoses nocturnes). Not as well-known as his Second String Quartet (one of the supreme masterpieces of late 20th-century chamber music), the First Quartet marks a period of metamorphosis in Ligeti's career in which he began to find his unique voice.

Written in 1953-54, Ligeti has described it as a "bottom drawer" work, meaning that he expected no performance of it in Communist Hungary. He began his career writing folk-influenced music in the "Social Realist" style dictated by the Communists. He knew the authorities would not allow the First Quartet to be heard in Hungary, because it displays the influence of Bart�k. This influence is impressive since most of Bart�k's "modern" music (including the string quartets) was forbidden under the Communist regime. Ligeti knew Bart�k's Third and Fourth Quartets (Bart�k's most dissonant quartets) only through scores. On the surface, the sounds of Ligeti's quartet--the grinding discords, the vigorous folk-like rhythms, the "night music" passages (a hesitant, stuttering melody sounded over a sustained chord), and the timbral exploration--all reveal Ligeti's debt to his early compositional idol.

Yet the form of the First Quartet is most unlike Bart�k's retooling of classical structures or his innovative formal schemes built like an arch; Ligeti's quartet consists of 12 brief movements, each crashing into the next without pause, all unified by the recurrent use of a four-note motive. This type of form looks back to the "variation" forms of Sch�nberg and Berg ("variation" in quotes because they have little to do with traditional harmonic variations), yet also looks ahead to other composers such as Crumb and Kurtag who built large works out of contrasting small movements.

While the First Quartet may seem to some to have been written by a different composer than the genius who wrote the Requiem, Atmospheres, the String Quartet no. 2, or the Chamber Concerto, closer listening reveals inklings of the composer to emerge a decade later as the reluctant leader of the European avant-garde. The ostinati, while reminiscent of Bart�k and Stravinsky, also presage the crazily repetitive "clock" music of Ligeti's mature style. All four instruments participate in rapid unison passages of pitch and/or rhythm, suggestive of those marvelous scrambling figures doubled in octaves in the Chamber Concerto. A frequent climactic device is a melodic ascent culminating in sustained or repeated high notes, another device found in Ligeti's classics from the 1960s. There are sections where each part blurs into a web of sound, such as the waves of harmonics at the conclusion of the work, foreshadowing the "micropolyphony" of the Requiem, the Chamber Concerto, or Lux Aeterna, textures where the counterpoint is so dense that it creates a cloud of sound where individual lines are indiscernable. Finally, is there any contemporary composer so inventive as Ligeti? The marvelous sense of play and wonder that flourishes in his music is abundantly evident in this early transitional piece.

The String Quartet no. 1 was given a dramatic performance by the Artemis Quartet. The ensemble work was especially impressive; it sounded terribly difficult to make the abrupt shifts from one style or texture to another without pause, but that's exactly what the Artemis did. The Adagios were mysterious, eerie, and poignant. The climaxes were thrilling. Little wonder that the quartet's ending brought a large number of listeners to their feet, cheering audience members who recognized the power of this work and the mastery of the Artemis Quartet's performance.