The second concert of the season as part of the Diotima Quartet’s residency on Avenue Montaigne, where they welcome the young cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière to perform Schubert’s Quintet D. 956. This is a major work in the composer’s chamber music output, in which the presence of two cellos lends a deep timbre of great expressive richness and an almost orchestral dimension. “It is only now that I have learnt to compose string quartets properly.” So said Beethoven in 1801, having just completed his first collection of string quartets, Opus 18: the competition from Haydn and Mozart must have been overwhelming for the composer. From No. 1 onwards, with its dramatic echoes of Shakespeare’s *Romeo and Juliet*, one senses the full audacity and originality of his writing for the string quartet, which would reach its full flowering in the years to come.