History of a kind took place at St. Iberius Church on Wednesday when the youngest ever string quartet took to the stage in the first of a trio of Music for Wexford lunchtime recitals.
Cairde String Quartet (Mairead Hickey, violin, Caoilfhionn Ni Choileain, violin, Martha Campbell, viola and William Lehane, cello) was formed in 2006 when the musicians were all just ten or eleven.
Since then, their star had been in the ascendant, and they claimed the Director’s Prize for outstanding achievement  at CSM 2009 and have given many recitals in Ireland and throughout Europe.
This was their inaugural outing in Wexford and before a good audience they made light work of Schubert’s String Quaret No. 13 in A minor (Rosamunde).
The Allegro ma non troppo is reminiscent of the melancholy  of Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade, though it is the famous Andante which has bequeathed the quartet its name, from Rosamunde.
The slightly gypsy influence underlying the Allegro moderato was an opportunity for this gifted quartet to push the boat out, so to speak, and brighten  a dull summer’s day with flickering tonalities.
Opening the concert with Mozart’s String Quartet in C Major, K. 465 Dissonance, an arc of dramatic tension was immediately discernible between the violin and the cello, but the movement is, of course, both sweet and tender.
There is something of the night about the opening Adagio, full of anxiety and foreboding, which echoes the influence of Haydn, but, Mozart being Mozart, there follows a bright explosion of consonance. The Cairde String Quartet conquered one of the most discernible audiences in the country. (Tomorrow’s concert features Nadene Fiorentini on piano with a programme of Beethoven, Granados, Messiaen and Chopin).