Opening of the Autumn Chamber Music Festival

08.09.2015 12:08 | Latvia

Photo: jurmala.lv

Author: Jurmala TIC
Source: Jurmala TIC

Cuarteto Casals (the Casals Quartet) is a matter of pride in the Spanish world of music. It is the first string quartet from Spain to have won extensive recognition and praise in the world. The sign of success for the quartet is its unusual sound – fresh, persistent and faultless. It is unusual that the first violinist and second violinist sometimes trade places, thus consolidating the musicians and bringing them closer to a unified spirit of performance.

Quite soon after its establishment, Cuarteto Casals won the international London String Quartet Competition in 2000 and the Johannes Brahms Hamburg competition in 2002. This opened up the path to many concert halls throughout the world for the musicians. They are among very few musicians who have had the great honour of playing a series of pearl-decorated string instruments manufactured by Stradivarius himself at the Royal Palace of Madrid.

Reklāma

The ensemble’s recordings are published by the Harmonia Mundi publishing house in France. The journal Gramophonehas listed its performance of Mozart’s quartets among the top ten performances thereof. One of the string quartets from the relevant album will be performed in Jūrmala, with the Mozart opus being accompanied by Franz Schubert’sThirteenth Quartet, “Rosamunde,” which is full of song, and Joseph Haydn’s Bird Quartet, which is seen as the originator of the genre of classicism in Viennese music.

Musicians:

Cuartero Casals
Abel Thomas, violin
Vera Martinez, violin
Jonathan Brown, viola
Arnau Tomàs, cello

Programme:

Joseph Haydn, String Quartet in C Major, Hob.III:39 (The Bird)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, String Quartet in C Major, KV 465 (Dissonance)
Franz Schubert, String Quartet in A Minor, D. 804 (Rosamunde)