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Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) has suffered (as did Martinů) from his fecundity. Milhaud played chamber music in his childhood and valued the economy and austerity of the string quartet genre as 'an intellectual discipline and crucible for the most intense emotions'. He began with Op.5 (1912) and by 1920 had determined to compose eighteen string quartets (one more than Beethoven)! Having achieved that goal after a couple more decades with Op.308 (1942), he paused but could not quite stop, and so, to complete a uniquely revealing and rewarding collection, here are included a short In memoriam Igor Stravinsky (1971) and three Etudes sur des thèmes liturgiques du Comtat venaissin (1973).

5 CD