Bohuslav Martinů’s seven numbered string quartets span a period from 1918 to 1947, and the three works on this recording give a good idea of the way in which the composer drew upon folk material from his Czechoslovakian homeland. The Fourth and Fifth String Quartets, composed in Paris in the years preceding the Second World War, exhibit an astringency of harmony and form allied with an increasing use of Czech and Moravian thematic material. In contrast the Seventh Quartet, composed in New York in 1947, tends in its style toward a greater classical simplification.