Named after the celebrated American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, the Cassatt String Quartet is ideally placed to interpret the music of Dan Welcher, the main theme from whose personable Third String Quartet is based on the artist’s name and was written for this outstanding all-female ensemble. The good humored second quartet recalls Welcher’s delightful experience of the magnificent harbor for which Sydney, Australia, is world famous, while his first, unnamed, quartet is by turns abrasive, melancholy, tragic, soothing, darkly comic and ultimately victorious in character. Orchestral works by Dan Welcher can be heard on Naxos 8.559287.