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Formosa Quartet:

From Hungary to Taiwan

From Hungary to Taiwan is a milestone album from the award-winning Formosa Quartet. Released by Bridge Records, the album pairs three imaginative new works with Béla Bartók's towering Fourth String Quartet, a nod to the group's Taiwanese heritage and a celebration of "folk", in every sense of the word.

The program juxtaposes two pairs: Hungarian folk music in two representations, and Taiwanese folk music in two representations. Formosa Quartet decided to commission composers Dana Wilson, Lei Liang, and Wei-Chieh Lin to create this fascinating view of cultural identity.

As liner notes annotator Ronald Robboy wrote, "This imaginative recording project offers treatments of folk music from Hungary and Taiwan that juxtapose the two in unexpected ways, illuminating different facets of their respective musical cultures and causing us to think more deeply about what can be meant by, not just the term ‘folk music,' but by the music itself."