Much in demand as a popular songwriter during the 1960s and ’70s, award-winning composer George Kontogiorgos has devoted himself to classical music since the 1980s. These three string quartets range from the tonal romanticism and esoteric conflict of Unicorn and the introspective and primal power of de Profundis, to an ecstatic Byzantine atmosphere of ritualistic devotion and youthfully erotic memories. My Mother’s Violin commemorates painful family history through its most precious artefact, and the archaic scales in Mixitropia create a microcosm of ancient and minimalist modern sound-worlds.