by Stephanie Manning
Reposted with the permission of Oberlin Conservatory
These days, the Danish String Quartet keep their touring schedule simple. Arrive in a new city in the morning, play a concert in the evening, and repeat. That’s not because the group doesn’t like exploring new places — it’s because they’ve got little ones waiting at home.
“ Back before we had kids, we did three-week tours, four-week tours in the States,” violinist Frederik Øland says. “Now we’re down to two weeks at a time, because anything more than that is just too much.”
A lot has changed since the early 2000s, when the newly-formed quartet were all teenagers at Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Academy of Music. But what’s stayed constant is the critical acclaim that follows wherever they go. On Friday, November 21, the celebrated ensemble — comprised of violinists Øland and Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, violist Asbjørn Nørgaard, and cellist Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin — will make their Oberlin debut as part of the Artist Recital Series. [Read more…]
Could the prodigiously talented players of the Danish String Quartet all be drinking from some magic source? By now among the world’s finest quartets — perhaps taking the top rung left by the Emerson Quartet after their recent retirement — they perform with such easy excellence and intuitive musical consensus that you wonder: is this the product of hard work and long hours of rehearsal, or some magic potion?