Cuarteto Casals, one of the most international chamber ensembles and closely linked to L’Auditori, will conclude the Chamber season tomorrow with a concert in Hall 2 Oriol Martorell.

This concert will be a first-class preview of the Barcelona String Quartet Biennale, which will be co-curated by L’Auditori and Cuarteto Casals and will bring, from 14 to 18 September, some of the most prestigious ensembles in this genre, such as the Jerusalem, Ébène and Belcea quartets.

Tomorrow’s concert and the Biennale are two of the key dates for Cuarteto Casals in 2022, in which it celebrates the 25th year of a successful career.

As part of tomorrow’s programme, Cuarteto Casals will perform Schubert’s String Quintet accompanied by cellist Santiago Cañón, and Mozart’s String Quartet No. 15.

Two months before his death, Schubert wrote to his editor offering him some piano sonatas, the Swan Song song cycle, and a string quintet. Probst’s response was to request more songs, completely ignoring the extraordinary String Quintet, the Viennese composer’s last chamber work and the only one for this instrumental line-up.

Schubert added a second cello to the classical quartet rather than a second viola, a resource also used by Luigi Boccherini. The emotional and dramatic intensity contrasts with the brilliance of the common key of C major, considered a gesture in tribute to his admired Mozart and Beethoven, composers of string quintets in the same key.

Mozart, in turn, musically revered and personally admired the great Joseph Haydn, who in the late 18th century was the most famous composer in a Europe in the throes of the Industrial Revolution. Haydn’s six Russian Quartets, Op. 33 deeply impressed Mozart, who was busy with children and piano recitals but who took on the challenge of composing six quartets as a musical gesture of admiration and homage to his friend and teacher. Quartet No. 15 is the second quartet dedicated to Haydn and the only one in a minor key.