Not only do both Quartets set formidable technical challenges, they require astonishing emotional commitment and dramatic timing...the Romanian Arcadia Quartet certainly have the measure of the dramatic aspects of these remarkable works.

The Arcadias may occasionally overstate their case, but the playing has such intensity that you cannot mistake the First Quartet’s tragic despair or the Second’s existential force. The result is an assault on the senses, piercing the heart of this unsettling music: not for the faint-hearted.

the players relate these extremes to a bold but thoughtful performance of two remarkable works. They are strenuous performances...The recording is vivid and immediate.

Each fresh hearing of Janacek’s quartets is a shock — as if his researches into what he called “the melody of speech” resulted in a totally new kind of music...Both works are played with searing intensity by the fine young Romanian quartet.