Cuarteto Casals

The award-winning quartet Cuarteto Casals formed in Madrid in 1997 and is thus celebrating its 25-year anniversary this year. The ensemble performs at the most prestigious concert halls in the world, including Konzerthaus in Vienna, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Carnegie Hall in New York. In 2020, the year of Beethoven’s anniversary, Cuarteto Casals performed all of Beethoven’s string quartets at Konserthuset Stockholm in a total of six concerts throughout the course of the year. 

The fugue had its heyday during the baroque era, and Johann Sebastian Bach was a master of the form. He composed Die Kunst der Fuge at the end of his life, and here we also hear this impressive music in a version for string quartet. The work is his most comprehensive fugue, like a grand essay demonstrating the possibilities and beauty that can be achieved in the work of the fugue, with independent, reflective and ‘interacting’ parts. 

Die Kunst der Fuge is thought to be incomplete, which bewildered music researchers. Some say that the piece was composed for educational purposes, given its design: a series of fugues, each slightly more complex than the one before it – so that a student working through the fugues in order would gradually learn more. Thus it is like a ‘lesson book’ that is also an astounding work of art in its own right.