Béla Bartók -The String Quartets -Tokyo String Quartet (1981) (3 CD's)

The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók wrote six string quartets, each for the usual force of two violins, viola and cello. Many musical connoisseurs often consider these quartets to be as intricate and as clever as Beethoven's later string quartets. They are replete with humor, desolation, and beauty tinged with a very distinct Hungarian feel. They also stretch the boundaries of the stringed instrument, adding for example Bartók pizzicato, a type of pizzicato performed by pulling the string upwards then letting it snap back against the fingerboard. - from Wikipedia.