Ruperto Chapí - String Quartets Nos.3 and 4

Ruperto CHAPI (1851–1909)

String Quartets Nos.3 and 4

String Quartet No. 3 in D major

String Quartet No. 4 in B minor

Cuarteto Latinoamericano

Release Date: January 28, 2022

Ruperto Chapí’s String Quartet No. 3 could well be subtitled Tragic Quartet. Here’s a work of a stormy nature, containing atmospheres of drama, anguish and loneliness. Out of the four quartets written by the composer, this is perhaps the one which has the least Spanish features.

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“Spanish Composer Ruperto Chapí was born in 1851 in Villena, Alicante province, where he began his musical studies at an early age. Showing an exceptional talent, he moved to Madrid at the age of sixteen, continuing his studies at the capital’s Conservatorio under the tutelage of Emilio Arrieta. After stints in Rome and Paris (where he met Saint-Saëns), he came back to Spain in 1880, where he began his affiliation with the world of zarzuela (Spanish lyric opera), eventually becoming one of the major exponents of this genre in the history of Spanish music. It is with his zarzuela La Tempestad (1882) that he achieves his first national success. Many more would follow during his lifetime, with over a hundred lyric works, including the one that made Chapí a household name in Spain, La Revoltosa (1897). 

Towards the end of his life, however, Chapí became interested in chamber music, and beginning in 1903 he undertakes the composition of his four String Quartets, works that constitute one of the most important legacies of the Spanish post-romantic era.

Once he finished his quartets, Chapí went back to lyric music composition, finishing what would be his last opera, Margarita la Tornera at the beginning of 1909.  In March of that same year, Ruperto Chapí died of a heart attack.

Cuarteto Latinoamericano, is one of the world’s most renowned classical music ensembles, for forty years the leading proponent of Latin American music for string quartet. Founded in Mexico in 1982, the Cuarteto has toured extensively throughout Europe, North and South America, Israel, China, Japan, and New Zealand. They have premiered more than a hundred works written for them and they continue to introduce new and neglected composers to the genre. Winners of the 2012 and 2016 Latin Grammys for Best Classical Recordings, they have been recognized with the Mexican Music Critics Association Award and three times received Chamber Music America/ASCAP’s “Most Adventurous Programming” Award.”

Saúl Bitran