‘A quartet for the new millennium if I ever heard one’, wrote a reviewer for Strad Magazine on hearing Cuarteto Casals for the first time, shortly after its inception in 1997 at the Escuela Reina Sofía in Madrid. Since its debut, Cuarteto Casals has been a repeated guest at the world’s most festivals and prestigious concert halls including Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Musikverein Vienna, Philharmonie Cologne, Cité de la Musique Paris, Schubertiade festival in Schwarzenberg, Concertgebouw Amsterdam and the Philharmonie in Berlin, among many others throughout Europe, North America and Japan. This summer, they share a stage at the Salzburg Festival with the pianist Igor Levit, who played for Camerata Musica Cambridge last term.

The quartet has compiled a substantial discography with the Harmonia Mundi label, including to date eleven CDs, with repertoire ranging from the lesser known Spanish composers Arriaga and Toldrá to the Viennese classics Mozart, Haydn, and Schubert, and on to Brahms, and the 20th-Century greats: Bartók, Kurtág and Ligeti. Since 2015, the quartet has been recording its first Beethoven CDs, and has released a five-DVD set of the compelete Schubert quartets, recorded live at L’Auditori in Barcelona in 2013.

It has ‘a sonic signature entirely its own,’ enthused the New York Times, describing Cuarteto Casals’ distinctive range of expression. In recognition of Cuarteto Casals’ unique position as the first Spanish string quartet with a truly international profile, the quartet has been honoured with Spain’s Premio Nacional de Música as well as the Premi Ciutat Barcelona. The quartet has accompanied the King of Spain on diplomatic visits, and often performed on the peerless collection of decorated Stradivarius instruments in the Royal Palace in Madrid. Cuarteto Casals often appears on television and radio throughout Europe and North America and is Quartet in Residence at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz, Cologne, and at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya in Barcelona, where all four members reside. 

Alexander Melnikov graduated from the Moscow Conservatory and his career was much influenced by an early encounter with Sviatoslav Richter, who thereafter regularly invited him to festivals in Russia and France. As a soloist, Melnikov has performed with orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, among others, and under conductors such as Mikhail Pletnev, Charles Dutoit, and Valery Gergiev.  His recording of the complete Preludes and Fugues by Shostakovich was named by the BBC Music Magazine as one of the ‘50 Greatest Recordings of All Time’.  His superlative recording of the Schumann Piano Concerto with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra was a Gramophone ‘Editor’s Choice’ for 2015.