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Quartet of distinction
PREVIEW: CALLINO QUARTET
Conway hall
BEING in a string quartet is an especially competitive business, with music students creating their own ensemble with unnerving frequency.
There are a few, however, which emerge with distinction and demand attention.
One such is the Callino Quartet, an all-women group who formed in Ireland in 1999 and have made quite an impression.
With Micheala Girandi and Sarah Sexton on violin, Rebecca Jones on viola and Sarah McMahon on cello, the quartet has really made its name performing at some of the smaller music festivals around Europe.
Having heard their recording of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, I was pleasantly surprised by the fresh tone, vigorousness and sense of poise they brought to the work.
Not taking it at the pace which some quartets do, the work possessed a hefty dose of presence, adding extra dynamism to the slower sections.
So in what is one of their few London concerts this year, the programme includes Haydn’s String Quartet in D Minor, Beethoven’s Quartet in D, and Mendelssohn’s String Quartet F Minor.
It will be interesting to see what the very promising Callino Quartet can bring to these oft-performed and recorded works.
And it is a tribute to the organisers, the London Chamber Music Series.
Outside of the Wigmore Hall, and perhaps St John’s Smith Square, there is no organisation which so regularly schedules the best small ensembles to perform in London.
Future concerts hosted by the series, at the Conway Hall in Bloomsbury, include the Fibonacci Sequence, the highly celebrated Allegri Quartet and the Angell Trio.
– See listings
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