Northern Horizons On the Program of the Danish String Quartet
Anne do Paço
For almost 20 years, the four musicians of the Danish String Quartet have succeeded not only in broadening horizons again and again, but have also managed to invite their audiences to listen ever more closely. Contemporary music has a permanent place in the ensemble’s performances just like the major repertoire works, but the latter are presented in unusual contexts—as in today’s concert—allowing them to be heard in new and different ways. Short Stories for String Quartet The program opens with music of stark contrasts: Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen draws us into a thick jungle of sound at the beginning of his Ten Preludes for String Quartet—yet after only a few bars, the highly expressive energy breaks down and the music, limited to individual sustained notes and repetitions, seems as if frozen, reminiscent of the plaintive call of a lost fledgling bird. Violent outbursts in triple forte answer passages that are reduced almost to the point of silence. Experimental roughness keeps colliding with a simplicity that illuminates the essential sources of music-making—to explore the waxing and waning of sounds. The energy of forward-propelled rhythms is thwarted by crass chord clusters. A homophonic section could appear as a thing of great simpleness, were not its harmonics so sharply jarring. A melody that develops from a straight forward scale with all four instruments in unison exudes an aura of sacred archaism, lending the ensemble playing great unity. At another moment, the violins and viola explore the effects of individual, feverishly pale chords above a “ticking” motion of the cello. Finally, a folk song full of complicated, dance-like rhythms is hinted at. “In all their briefness, these ten ‘short stories’ for string quartet contain almost all that 13
