“The quartet I would most want to hear play just about anything.”—New York
The critically acclaimed, prizewinning Danish String Quartet, appearing at Hodgson Concert Hall Friday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m., is not your standard classical music group. Here’s how they describe themselves: “We are three Danes and one Norwegian cellist, making this a truly Scandinavian endeavor. Being relatively bearded, we are often compared to the Vikings. However, we are only pillaging the English coastline occasionally.”
Between incursions, the Grammy-nominated Danish String Quartet plays standard repertoire, new music and their own folk song transcriptions.
“We have borrowed and arranged a selection of tunes that are all very close to our hearts,” the quartet writes. “We perform them as a string quartet, one of the most powerful musical vehicles we know of. The string quartet is a pure construct: Four simple instruments made of wood. But in all its simplicity the string quartet is capable of expressing a myriad of colors, nuances, and emotions — just like folk music.
“Our idea is to marry these two simple but powerful things: the folk music and the string quartet. Normally the string quartet has been reserved for the classical masters. Now we want to see what happens when we let the Nordic folk music flow through the wooden instruments of the string quartet.”
Celebrated for their “intense blend, extreme dynamic variation (in which they seem glued together), perfect intonation even on harmonics, and constant vitality and flow” (Gramophone) and renowned for the palpable joy they exude in music-making, the Danish String Quartet has become one of today’s most in-demand classical quartets, performing to sold-out concert halls around the world.
The Danish Quartet celebrated their 20th anniversary in 2022-2023, having formed when violinists Frederik Øland and Rune Tonsgaard Sørenson and violist Asbjørn Nørgaard were teenagers under the mentorship of Tim Frederiksen of Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Academy of Music. In 2008, the three Danes were joined by Norwegian cellist Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin.
The Danish Quartet’s inventive and intriguing programming and repertoire choices have produced critically acclaimed original projects and commissions. This season, the Quartet will complete its DOPPELGÄNGER series, an ambitious four-year international commissioning project pairs world premieres from four composers — Bent Sørensen, Lotta Wennäkoski, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Thomas Adès — with late major chamber works by Schubert.
Each season, the Quartet has performed a world premiere on a program with its doppelgänger — the Schubert quartet or quintet that inspired it — culminating in 2024 in the premiere of a quintet by Adès, after the String Quintet in C Major. The DOPPELGÄNGER pieces are commissioned by the Danish String Quartet with the support of Carnegie Hall, Cal Performances, UC Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures, Vancouver Recital Society, Flagey in Brussels, and Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam.
In summer 2023 the Quartet performed at Ravinia and at Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall. The 2023-2024 season sees them on tour in eighteen cities in the USA and Canada and venues in Norway, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Brussels, Italy, and their home of Denmark.
The Danish String Quartet has been the recipient of many awards and appointments, including Musical America’s 2020 Ensemble of the Year and the Borletti-Buitoni Trust. The Quartet was named in 2013 as a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and appointed to the Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two). The Quartet was awarded the 2010 NORDMETALL-Ensemble Prize at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival in Germany, and, in 2011, received the Carl Nielsen Prize, the highest cultural honor in Denmark.
PROGRAM
PURCELL: Chacony in G Minor for String Quartet (arr. Britten)
HAYDN: String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 20, No. 3
SHOSTAKOVICH: String Quartet No. 7 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 108
TRADITIONAL: Folk Songs (arr. DSQ)
PERFORMANCE TALK
Join us for a free pre-performance talk by Theresa Chafin in Ramsey Concert Hall from 6:45-7:15 pm.
THREE WAYS TO ORDER TICKETS
- Purchase tickets online 24/7 online here.
- Call the Performing Arts Center Box Office at (706) 542-4400, Mon.-Fri., 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
- Visit the UGA Performing Arts Center Box Office, Mon.-Fri., 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (5 minute parking is available in the drop off circle at the Performing Arts Center for purchasing or picking up tickets.)