On this album, Cuarteto Quiroga invites listeners to rediscover Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga’s three string quartets in a new light. This recording marks the bicentenary of the death of the great Basque composer, who died in 1826, shortly before his twentieth birthday. The works were recorded on gut strings in order to recreate, with the greatest possible authenticity, the transparent and warm sonority of the era, around 1820, thus establishing a link between past and present. His three string quartets, composed when he was only 16, can easily be compared with those of Schubert, Mozart and other great composers written at such a young age. Arriaga’s exceptional mastery of the most demanding musical genre of all, the string quartet — a mastery that few others have been able to demonstrate at such a young age — bears witness to the stature of his genius.