Boccherini: Six Quartets

String player, director and scholar, Emilio Moreno is the ideal guide to the music of Luigi Boccherini. Joined by the talented Dutch keyboard player Arthur Schoonderwoerd, Moreno leads La Real Cámara, with regular partners violist Antonio Clares and cellist Mercedes Ruiz, in six piano quartets transcribed from Boccherini’s Op 26 two-movement quartettini of 1778.

Moreno also takes us back to the Age of Enlightenment, to the cultured court of the Infante Don Luis de Borbón, the brother of the Spanish king, in Arenas de San Pedro - a royal residence outside Madrid. where chamber music of all configurations was performed by the Font family quartet and Boccherini (a noted cellist himself), with technical assurance and artistry.

Here, fortepiano joins violin, viola and basse obligé, coming together in elegant, witty and graceful chamber music, in scores touched by those popular Spanish motifs cheerfully incorporated by Boccherini.