Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin Archives

Danish String Quartet at Cleveland Chamber Music Society (Nov. 14)

November 21, 2023 by Kevin McLaughlin

by Kevin McLaughlin

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?

Neither strain nor sweat were visible in the program for the Cleveland Chamber Music Society on November 14 at Disciples Christian Church, which included works by Mozart, Britten, Adès, and their own folk arrangements.

[Read more…]

Danish String Quartet to open Cleveland Chamber Music Society series

October 3, 2017 by Jarrett Hoffman

by Jarrett Hoffman

When you play the first track of Last Leaf, the Danish String Quartet’s new album of Nordic folk music, a tune over a drone in the harmonium meets your ears. Whether “Despair Not, O Heart,” a Lutheran chorale known mostly as a funeral hymn, finds a certain spot in you called soul or just some hidden nook of the brain, it feels special.

Praised by the Washington Post as “one of the best quartets before the public today,” the Danish String Quartet — Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen and Frederik Øland, violins, Asbjørn Nørgaard, viola, and Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, cello — follow up Last Leaf with an October tour beginning in the U.S. and wrapping around to Denmark and Germany.

On October 10, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society brings the Quartet to Plymouth Church UCC in Shaker Heights with a program of Bartok’s String Quartet No. 1, Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 59, No. 1, and Nordic folk music arranged by the Quartet.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Repertory Orchestra’s season opener contemplates circles of life (Nov. 2)

by Stephanie Manning

“This moment is full of wonders.” Composer Anna Clyne meditated on those words — written by Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh — as she wrote her orchestral work This Moment. That theme, of learning to cherish life more by reflecting on death, underscored most of the music chosen for the Cleveland Repertory Orchestra’s program on November 2.

The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Christian Church hosted the season-opening concert, titled “Reflection and Revelations.” The venue’s dry acoustic helped the textures remain clear in Clyne’s piece, a somber and meditative seven minutes. [Read on…]

Pianist Garrick Ohlsson, conductor Daniel Reith lead Cleveland Orchestra in Beethoven concert (Nov. 9)

by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A relaxed understanding born of a long career helped pianist Garrick Ohlsson bring easy grace and Proto-Romantic sensibility to Beethoven’s Second and Fourth Piano Concertos with the Cleveland Orchestra.

The program on Saturday at Severance Music Center featured early and middle works, the second set of concerts in the Orchestra’s cycle of Beethoven piano concertos.

Despite its number, the Second Concerto is actually the composer’s first, begun in 1790. Ohlsson treated this early Beethoven work expressively, with sinuous rubato, keeping his rhythms precise, his touch light, and his rhetoric clear. Nothing, not even Beethoven’s many technical snares, seemed to faze him.

[Read on…]

See all reviews

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us