The façade of San Cassiano’s parish church with its fabulous Celtic stone ornamentations formed the backdrop to the concert given yesterday by the LAiKA quartet, four young Danish musicians (violinists Jakob Elmark and Jonas Willaume, violist Jens Bendix Nielsen, and cellist Amalie Askjær Staunæs) formed in 2022 at the Royal Danish Academy of Music.

The concert opened with Haydn’s Quartet in G minor, one of the six Op 20 quartets that revolutionized the genre. Both intense and poetic its slow movement contained an especially heart-warming part for the cello, beautifully played by Amalie.

The String Quartet No. 6 by Danish composer Rued Langgaard (1893–1952),  followed. In a dramatic, late-Romantic style full of sudden mood swing the quartet alternated between lyrical moments and bursts of energy.

The program continued with the second movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s Quartet in A minor No. 2 composed in 1827, when the musician was just 18 years old. The intense and expressive adagio revealed the young Mendelssohn’s precocious emotional maturity.

The concert concluded with “Regin Smiður,” a traditional Faroese song recounting the legendary feat of the mythological blacksmith Regin connecting past and present, folklore and classicism, with much energy.

The LAiKA quartet is in the Lucchesia as part of the Virtuoso and Belcanto festival and is also engaging in a quartet competition here. Their brilliant ensemble playing leaves no doubt in me that they could be the winners!

Don’t forget, there’s plenty more to follow in San Cassiano’s festive summer! And for string quartet lovers don’t miss the Adolfo Betti finalists’ concert at our town hall.