How many pieces of chamber music do you know with castanets in them? We have one here: the brilliant Luigi Boccherini’s Guitar Quintet No. 6 in D major. The quintet is one of four works on this delightful album by Cuarteto Casals. The album takes its title from Boccherini’s innovative foray into programmatic chamber music, the String Quintet in C Major.
Italian by birth, Boccherini was a musician at the court of the Spanish Infante Luis. When the Infante was banished from Madrid, Boccherini accompanied him to a town near Ávila and composed the quintet to cheer up his boss. Boccherini sketched out a detailed program with the quintet imitating the sounds of bells, drum-rolls, marches and more.
