This disc by the Norwegian Cikada String Quartet sets three very different string quartets side by side. They are Kaija Saariaho's Nymphéa (1987) for quartet and live electronics, John Cage's String Quartet in Four Parts (1949/50) and Bruno Maderna's Quartetto per archi in due tempi (1955). The album, sometimes listed as In due tempi, came out on ECM New Series in 2005. It links a spectral score of the 1980s with two postwar works built on silence, transparency and strict construction.

The quartet is Henrik Hannisdal and Odd Hannisdal on violins, Marek Konstantynowicz on viola and Morten Hannisdal on cello. They had already been heard on ECM in Arild Andersen's Hyperborean, and this was their first album of their own for the label. It was recorded in August 2001 at Sofienberg Church in Oslo, with Arild Erikstad as Tonmeister and Audun Strype as engineer. Bjarne Kvinnsland handled the live electronics in the Saariaho, and Manfred Eicher was executive producer.

Nymphéa is a single movement of almost 19 minutes. Saariaho treats the strings as raw material for an electronic transformation, pushing dynamics and timbres to extremes, and the players whisper lines of verse by Arseny Tarkovsky. Cage's quartet follows the cycle of the seasons in four movements, from Quietly Flowing Along to a closing Quodlibet. It is made of fixed chords, which Cage called gamuts, played with very little vibrato and almost no bow pressure. Maderna's quartet, dedicated to Luciano Berio, applies serial technique to duration as well as pitch. Its two movements move from careful, slow development to fractured, restless writing and back.

The album was a Chamber Choice in BBC Music Magazine and received an Edison Award in 2005. There Martin Cotton praised playing that is "never ugly, even when asked to make extreme demands on the instruments" and closed with "Riveting stuff." In The Strad, David Denton singled out the "subtly shaded, quiet dynamics" of the Cage and Maderna performances. Writing later for ECM Reviews, Tyran Grillo called it an overlooked New Series album that deserves full attention.

This is the CD edition of ECM New Series 1799, first released in 2005.