Harrison Birtwistle is unquestionably one of the most frequentlyperformed British composers on the contemporary scene. Althoughbowed strings are the raison d être of this disc, their absence is noless conspicuous in the composer s early and mature works, for hewaited until he was nearly 60 before writing for string quartet, and theworks brought together here remain his only original works writtenexclusively for strings. The recording of these works by the ArdittiQuartet, dedicatee of the String Quartet: The Tree of Strings (which wascomposed for them) reflects the most recent development resultingfrom Birtwistle s working with this ensemble over the past 20 years.