Bartók blurred the barriers between art and folk music, romanticismand modernism, and diverse cultures of East and West in his sixstring quartets, among the twentieth century’s greatest musicalcreations.

The Heath Quartet’s complete cycle opens with theFirst String Quartet, a modern successor to Beethoven’s latequartets, and goes on to explore the haunting dissonances andstriking symmetries of the Fifth, written in 1934.