Callino Quartet, National Concert Hall, Dublin
The evening's greatest pleasure was the Callinos' performance of Debussy's early Quartet in G minor. The quartet have the knack of registering harmonic character with ease...this enabled them to capture the freshness of the only string quartet Debussy would complete.
Michael Dervan, The Irish Times, Friday 25th July, 2008

Easter treat for classical music lovers
Music lovers who were unlucky enough to have missed the feast of chamber music on offer in Cork over the Easter weekend would be well advised to keep an eye on the broadcasting schedule of Lyric FM. The six concerts that took place in the principal venue, Curtis Auditorium, Cork School of Music, were recorded for future broadcast and all of them are something to which I look forward. This mini festival began on Good Friday in St Mary's Dominican Church, Pope's Quay, when Haydn's Seven Last Words of Our Saviour received a most tender, polished and dramatic performance from the Callino Quartet. Other highlights included... the Callino Quartet playing Schumann.
...The Callino Quartet's performance of the Haydn ('Fifths' quartet) was as good as it gets; joyous, true to the score, wonderfully expressive and fabulously exciting.
...The Callino Quartet then demonstrated why their reputation is so high. Together with Finghin Collins they created an elegiac magic with Schnittke's Piano Quintet that almost moved me to tears...
Finally, both quartets combined for a gorgeously tuneful marvelously scored Octet by Svendsen to bring a well-attended feast of music to a most genial ending. Well done, West Cork Music, which organised and presented the feast.
Declan Townsend, Irish Examiner, 27th March 2008

Callino Quartet, Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
They opened with Beethoven's Opus 74 ("Harp"), capturing well the gentler, more relaxed mood with which the composer invested it after the rigorous, leading-edge quality of the three "Razumovsky" quartets published two years earlier. In particular, the Callino produced an almost voluptuous smoothness in the lyrical slow movement, though always nicely judged and without overstatement...full article
Michael Dungan, The Irish Times, 15th January 2008

Maturity belying their years
The Callino Quartet played with such dynamic musicality and passion on Saturday's coffee concert that there was little need to rouse the audience with caffeine beforehand. .. The final piece of the concert was the dark and personal String Quartet no. 8 by Shostakovich...Displaying an almost telepathic understanding of the music and each other, the group skillfully deployed the jagged rhythms and musical quotations effectively to the audience. Their articulation was impressive, the sound dynamic and expressive. this was a polished and well-considered programme of music. There was an element of freshness and modesty about the performance which was appealing and gave credence to the Quartet's sterling reputation."
Belfast Telegraph, 6th November, 2006

Callino String Quartet
An excellent programme and superlative playing marked the first concert promoted by Ireland Promoting New Music...I left this concert with two dominant impressions - the choice of music was excellent, and the unalloyed musicality of the Callino Quartet's playing was as good as you're likely to hear anywhere. Not for one second did they play the notes. Everything had expressive purpose, and at all times you felt that this was exactly how the music should go.
Martin Adams, The Irish Times, 8th December 2005

The Fab Fours Take A Bow On Leeside
The Callino Quartet play with such style and understanding of the music that one would readily believe that they had been playing together for fifteen, rather than five years. In music by Haydn, Wilson and Shostakovitch, they were able to subtly alter tone colours to suit the music and their account of Bartok No 3 was superb...
Declan Townsend, Irish Examiner, 5th April 2005

Fabulous Foursomes
The Callino Quartet's Boccherini (the Quintet in D, G353) was presented with a captivating lightness and agility, the style heavily influenced by the manners and sonorities of period performances. Freshness is the key word for the Callino's playing...
Michael Dervan, Irish Times, 5th April 2005

An Ensemble To Be Taken Seriously
A young string quartet which includes Schumann's Third Quartet in its repertoire is an ensemble to be taken seriously...full article
Conrad Wilson, Glasgow Herald, 4th November 2004

Callino Quartet, Orchestra of St. Cecilia, David Brophy, NCH, Dublin
...pure music-making, without a hint of ego...
Martin Adams, The Irish Times, 19th June 2003

Ein Wunsch ist offen: Wann gibts'd die CD? (One more wish: When will the debut CD appear?)
...the four young ladies of the Callino Quartet performed Beethoven with such authority that the audience in Remagen was left breathless...
Dr. Norbert Reglin, Rhein Zeitung, 2nd December 2002

Der einzige Auftritt in Deutschland
...the first work, the 'Tost' quartet by Haydn, drew a storm of applause from the audience, an ovation which grew in intensity after the performance of the Ravel. However, after the interval, the interpretation of the Razumovsky no. 1 by Beethoven displayed such virtuosity and brilliance that it showed us all why the audience welcomed this ensemble during their European tour with so much enthusiasm...
Rhein-Ahr Rundschau, 14th December 2002

...Enjoying the northern highlights
...the Callinos are not contemporary music specialists but on the evidence of the Up North! appearance they could with confidence choose to be...
Michael Dervan, The Irish Times, 13th December 2002

Callino String Quartet, Bray and Dublin
...the Callinos seem like naturals in the music of Haydn, which they played without hype or false rhetoric, so that the music seemed simply to speak for itself.....their Ravel was of that plain-speaking style which the composer so loved and which allowed the work's especial riches of harmony ro communicate without any recourse to interpretative exaggeration...
Michael Dervan, The Irish Times, 2nd October 2002

Callino give real pleasure
...the Callino gave a most mature performance of Haydn, Ravel and Beethoven.....it made for an evening of unalloyed pleasure for the audience... full article
Andre Jute, Irish Examiner, 16th October 2002

A Festival for personal use
...another highlight of the closing days (West Cork Chamber Music Festival) was the Callino's unhackneyed directness in Haydn's challenging Quartet in C, op. 54 no. 2. The quartet's leader, Ioana Petcu-Colan, was unfazed by her part's vertiginously high excursions, and the group's unforced musicianship allowed Haydn a freedom of expression that more self-consciously probing approaches often fail to achieve. This young Irish ensemble's performance of Brian Boydell's Adagio and Scherzo.....had a persuasive air of all passion spent...
Michael Dervan, The Irish Times, 10th July 2002

Classical
...the Callino Quartet made its Concert Hall debut on 17th October with remarkable mature performances of some of the great quartet repertory - Haydn, Janacek and Schubert, plus an amusingly quirky piece by Donnacha Dennehy. This group is already astonishingly confident, exhibiting teamwork and musicianship many a group ten years on the road would envy; we will watch their progress keenly...
Ian Fox, The Sunday Tribune, 11th November 2001

Professional musicians prove a big hit with pupils
...the six week project, which involved pupils, teachers and parents, came to a conclusion this week with performances by the Callino String Quartet....music appreciation talks for adults were also given by Leitrim-based composer Ian Wilson...the focus of his talks were the various works to be performed by the Callino Quartet during its residency over the past week...
Theresa Judge, The Irish Times, 26th October 2001

Callino Quartet, NCH, Dublin
...the players brought an unusual tenderness to Janacek's passionate Quartet No.1, which made the outbursts of jealous rage indicated by the subtitle 'Kreutzer Sonata' all the more unnerving...Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' quartet is built on a large scale and needs, at times, a richness of sound that could be considerd orchestral. The Callino Quartet's control of dynamics enabled them to fill the auditorium of the NCH effortlessly, or so it seemed...
Douglas Sealy, The Irish Times, 20th October 2001

West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Bantry House
...this year saw the return of the Callino Quartet...and is now, by a long shot, the most polished young string quartet that Ireland has recently produced.
Michael Dervan, The Irish Times, 4th July 2001

Callino Quartet at Artsfest 2000
...my first reaction to hearing this young quartet was astonishment at their maturity...all in their early twenties, (they) play with technical ease and musical integrity that belies their years.
Declan Townsend, The Examiner, November 2000

Rain couldn't drown out the sound of music
...for me, the most remarkable experience of the festival (West Cork) was hearing the last of the three young Irish quartets.... simply took my breath away with their playing of Schubert's Quartet in A minor. Here they showed a highly developed sense of the internal relationship of a fully functioning string quartet. The intonation gelled, the sense of give and take was effortless, and the judgement of scale was beautiful...I don't think I've ever heard a professional quartet give such a rewarding performance in concert...
Michael Dervan, The Irish Times, 6th July 1999

In Tune From The First Note
...this is a good description of the sort of mind-reading that's essential to the art of the string quartet...full article
Michael Dervan, The Irish Times, 23rd September 2002

Four-Part Harmony From a Quartet
..they are colleagues, as Samantha suggested, but also great friends, admitting to no tendencies to pair off, displaying great loyalty and presenting a four-sided relationship that is full of fun. It is a rare thing and they acknowledge their good fortune, and the fact that if even one had been reluctant to tow in, they might well have been simply colleagues by now...full article
Sarah Caden,Sunday Independent, 29 September 2002