When an ensemble such as the world-famous and prizewinning Arditti Quartet take to the studio for the purpose of producing a composer’s complete output for string quartet, this certainly can be considered as an expression of highest appraisal.

Here it holds good for the composer, organist and master of Japanese archery, Christian Ofenbauer, who was born in Graz in 1961 and today teaches as a professor at the University Mozarteum in Salzburg.

The double CD edition now being released by NEOS includes an extensive cycle of six string quartet movements composed between 1997 and 2011, along with another protracted solitary work for string quartet from 1999, which was inspired by Ödön von Horváth’s Tales from the Vienna Woods and carries a title borrowed from Bertolt Brecht: Zerstörung des Zimmers / der Zeit (Destruction of the Room / of Time).

With these premiere recordings an elaborate and haunting compendium of modern composition for string quartet awaits the listener.