Cuarteto Casals

Cuarteto Casals – Schubert: String Quartets #1 – Live in Barcelona (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:38 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Neu Records

Why, one might ask, would a Spanish string quartet make a live recording in Barcelona of the complete quartets of a long-dead Viennese composer for a label which insists upon working with living composers? What binds Cuarteto Casals, Franz Schubert and Neu Records together?

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Cuarteto Casals – J.S. Bach: The Art of Fugue (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:24 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Notated on four staves, as though intended for some unspecified set of instruments (or even voices? or keyboard?), these thirteen erudite contrapuncti, four canons, and an unfinished triple fugue—incorporating the letters of Bach’s name—are often considered to be his musical testament. Shrouded in myths traceable to its very origins, The Art of Fugue is a puzzle for the performers and for the listeners alike, but when a brilliant string quartet takes up the challenge, a solution becomes obvious, and the music takes flight.

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Cuarteto Casals – Mozart: String Quartets dedicated to Joseph Haydn K. 421, 458 ‘Hunt’, 464 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:23:48 minutes | 1,51 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

After the early quartets and the famous “Dissonance” Quartet, the Cuarteto Casals continues its exploration of the set of works Mozart dedicated to Joseph Haydn. Here one composer took on the mantle of the other: the younger man, who had now settled in Vienna and had just started a family, was going through an exceptional period of creativity, transfiguring everything he touched with his genius. An exhilarating experience for our Catalan musicians, following hard on the heels of their acclaimed Beethoven cycle.

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Cuarteto Casals – Mozart: String Quartet, K. 465 “Dissonance” (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 32:43 minutes | 629 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

The sincerest form of flattery. When he dedicated a set of six quartets to Haydn in 1785, Mozart was acknowledging the latter’s supremacy in this difficult genre, admitting that they had cost him ‘a long and laborious study’.

But the effort was worthwhile: inspired by the older composer’s masterpieces, Mozart did more than just imitate him; he integrated Haydn’s innovations into his own style, thereby producing a new milestone of Viennese Classicism.

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Cuarteto Casals – Haydn: Die sieben letzten Worte (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:12 minutes | 1,00 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Harmonia Mundi

Haydn composed his orchestral version of the Seven Last Words for Good Friday devotions in Cádiz. The task of creating a purely instrumental ‘oratorio’ consisting of seven contemplative slow movements was by no means an easy one; but the outcome was a work of sublime nobility. In its day, it was quite popular and inspired several transcriptions, including the version for string quartet heard here in a performance by the Barcelona-based Cuarteto Casals that is both stylistically sensitive and emotionally compelling.

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Cuarteto Casals – Boccherini: La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:16:58 minutes | 727 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Boccherini owes his celebrity to more than just the infamous Minuet of the Quintet Op.11 No.5 – although that is included here too. This recording rights the balance with some elan: from the brilliant castanets of the Fandango to the much more Viennese style of the String Quartet, the musicians of the Cuarteto Casals and their guests demonstrate the infinite creative resources of the composer. It culminates in the Night Music of the Streets of Madrid, a vivid example of musical realism in which, as Boccherini put it, ‘the strict rules of counterpoint’ would be out of place!

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Cuarteto Casals – Beethoven: The Complete String Quartets, Vol. III “Apotheosis” (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:44:59 minutes | 2,92 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

After “Inventions”, Apotheosis is the third and last volume in a complete set of the Beethoven quartets that breaks new ground: it aims to regroup the works according to their position within the three broad creative divisions of the composer’s life – the formative years, the ‘heroic’ period and the ‘late’ period. This programme assembles the ‘late’ quartets in a new sense, in other words those works in which the stylistic innovations of each of these creative periods reach their full flowering.

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Cuarteto Casals – Beethoven: Inventions 3 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:39 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Launching its complete cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets, the Cuarteto Casals presents this first installment featuring initial examples of the genre from each of the three key periods in the composer’s career: his formative years, the so called ‘heroic’ middle period, and that of his artistic maturity. The ingenious juxtaposition shows how much his superhuman quest for perfection enriched a compositional language of breathtaking originality in tandem with a depth of expression without precedent in this genre, of which Beethoven is the uncontested master.

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Cuarteto Casals – Beethoven: Inventions 2 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 50:25 minutes | 910 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Launching its complete cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets, the Cuarteto Casals presents this first installment featuring initial examples of the genre from each of the three key periods in the composer’s career: his formative years, the so called ‘heroic’ middle period, and that of his artistic maturity. The ingenious juxtaposition shows how much his superhuman quest for perfection enriched a compositional language of breathtaking originality in tandem with a depth of expression without precedent in this genre, of which Beethoven is the uncontested master.

(more…)

Cuarteto Casals – Beethoven: Inventions 1 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:12 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Launching its complete cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets, the Cuarteto Casals presents this first installment featuring initial examples of the genre from each of the three key periods in the composer’s career: his formative years, the so called ‘heroic’ middle period, and that of his artistic maturity. The ingenious juxtaposition shows how much his superhuman quest for perfection enriched a compositional language of breathtaking originality in tandem with a depth of expression without precedent in this genre, of which Beethoven is the uncontested master.

(more…)

Cuarteto Casals – Beethoven: Revelations, 3 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:19 minutes | 761 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Cuarteto Casals presents Revelations, the second volume in a new complete cycle of the Beethoven quartets. The group devised an innovative structural arrangement for its recordings. The works are not presented in the typical grouping of early, middle and late periods: rather they are arranged according to each quartet’s place within Beethoven’s musical development. This ingenious juxtaposition reveals as never before how Beethoven’s superhuman struggle for perfection gave birth to a musical language of breathtaking originality without precedent in this genre, of which Beethoven is the uncontested master.

(more…)

Cuarteto Casals – Beethoven: Revelations, 2 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:17 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Cuarteto Casals presents Revelations, the second volume in a new complete cycle of the Beethoven quartets. The group devised an innovative structural arrangement for its recordings. The works are not presented in the typical grouping of early, middle and late periods: rather they are arranged according to each quartet’s place within Beethoven’s musical development. This ingenious juxtaposition reveals as never before how Beethoven’s superhuman struggle for perfection gave birth to a musical language of breathtaking originality without precedent in this genre, of which Beethoven is the uncontested master.

(more…)

Cuarteto Casals – Beethoven : Revelations, 1 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 52:43 minutes | 951 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Cuarteto Casals presents Revelations, the second volume in a new complete cycle of the Beethoven quartets. The group devised an innovative structural arrangement for its recordings. The works are not presented in the typical grouping of early, middle and late periods: rather they are arranged according to each quartet’s place within Beethoven’s musical development. This ingenious juxtaposition reveals as never before how Beethoven’s superhuman struggle for perfection gave birth to a musical language of breathtaking originality without precedent in this genre, of which Beethoven is the uncontested master.

(more…)

Cuarteto Casals – Beethoven: Inventions 1 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:06 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Launching its complete cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets, the Cuarteto Casals presents this first installment featuring initial examples of the genre from each of the three key periods in the composer’s career: his formative years, the so called ‘heroic’ middle period, and that of his artistic maturity. The ingenious juxtaposition shows how much his superhuman quest for perfection enriched a compositional language of breathtaking originality in tandem with a depth of expression without precedent in this genre, of which Beethoven is the uncontested master.

(more…)