Der spanische Mozart

Special concert - String quartets by Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga
He was born in the Basque city of Bilbao exactly fifty years to the day after Mozart was born. He shares first names with Mozart, at least the first two, which Wolfgang Amadé never used. He studied in Paris and died shortly before his 20th birthday. From tuberculosis. He was gifted early on, but was no child prodigy and did not have much time. Arriaga's few works suggest that he would have had a bright future ahead of him. The three string quartets, pieces written at the age of 17, prove that he had not only already mastered the classical form to perfection, but also imbued it with the feeling of his time, the early Romantic period. Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga, the so-called "Spanish Mozart", was in truth a distant brother in the spirit of Franz Schubert - of whom he probably knew nothing. Four members of the Tyrolean Symphony Orchestra, the cedag quartet, perform the most important chamber music of a 19th century Spanish composer.