Conlon Nancarrow is doubtless one of the most original figures in the history of music. In the late 1940s, he turned to the instrument that later became inseparable from his name: the player piano. But he also wrote a whole series of works for conventional instruments, where he continued his rigorous explorations of the organization of musical time, creating works which range among the most difficult in technical terms in the modern literature for piano and ensemble. 
These works are tailor-made for the Arditti Quartet. "Quartets and Studies" presents a collection of highly virtuosic compositions by Conlon Nancarrow and arrangements by Paul Usher, Ivar Mikhashoff, and the composer himself.