The Danish String Quartet

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The Danish String Quartet has performed at Konserthuset three times before, most lately in 2015, and on these occasions Carl Nielsen’s music has often been the centre of attention – but not this time. The quartet will soon celebrate its 20th anniversary and the members, three Danes and one Norwegian, were only 15-16 years old when their journey started.

To begin with, music by Johann Sebastian Bach frames the string quartet by Anton Webern. Although centuries apart, there are apparent connections between these composers and Webern worked intensely on Bach’s music, for instance orchestrating pieces. In his String Quartet op 28 Webern also uses Bach’s name for the tone series B-A-C-H. 

A composer who used his name to compose in a very significant way was of course Dmitry Shostakovich, who with the germanic transkription of letters and tones D-E flat (”Ess” for S)-C-H (”H” corresponding to B in English music terminology) added a sounding fingerprint to his music. The 10th quartet (he composed 15 numbered quartets) is a dense, exciting and emotional piece of music.

The Danish String Quartet concludes with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The quartet in E flat major KV 428 is grouped within one of the six so called Haydn Quartets. They were dedicated to Haydn and express his admiration for Haydn’s quartets; Haydn, the father of string quartet composing. This is shimmering and bright music with some exciting harmonic details.