Franz Schubert was familiar with chamber music from music-making at home with his father and brothers. And the output of this brilliant Romantic, who was rather undervalued during his lifetime, would be dominated by reduced forces, as well as generally small, intimate audiences. His Twelfth String Quartet in A minor – the only one to be published during the composer’s lifetime and given its first public performance by leading musicians – drew a rather cool reception from the stern critics of Vienna. Its subtitle, as was often the case, was probably given without the composer’s participation. It refers to a self-quotation from Schubert’s incidental music to the play Rosamund, Princess of Cyprus, which appears in the second movement. In truth, however, the entire cycle is filled with borrowings and creative allusions to the composer’s earlier works. This is a wonderful, lyrical and largely nostalgic composition, in which Schubert’s biographers have sought traces of the composer’s lamenting of his youth, lost as a result of his incurable illness. This work is numbered among the composer’s ‘late’ quartets. Although aged just 27 at the time, Schubert had only four years left to live. It will be performed for the Warsaw Philharmonic audience by the excellent Quatuor Modigliani, celebrating its twentieth anniversary. The programme will also include other chamber works, including a new piece composed specially for the ensemble by the French pianist, organist and composer Jean-Frédéric Neuburger.