The Béla Bartók Complete Critical Edition that since 2017 the publisher G. Henle has been publishing jointly with the Hungarian Editio Musica Budapest, has produced an impressive seven volumes in its first five years. From the Works for Piano 1914–1920 to the large pedagogical cycles For Children and Mikrokosmos to a weighty volume of Choral Works and the famous Concerto for Orchestra, these volumes already cover the most diverse areas of Bartók’s oeuvre – though still lacking the chamber music.

All the more fitting then that the volume with the String Quartets Nos. 1–6 should appear this spring and hence just in time for the string-quartet year at Henle. It was edited by none other than László Somfai – founder of the Complete Edition and the most profound authority on Bartók’s oeuvre – in collaboration with Zsombor Németh, a Bartók scholar of the younger generation.