The world-renowned Danish String Quartet makes its Aldeburgh Festival debut, juxtaposing Anna Thorvaldsdottir's new work, Rituals, with Schubert’s Rosamunde Quartet.

The GRAMMY® nominated Danish String Quartet are one of the finest playing today. As The Wall Street Journal observes, “It’s often said of string quartets that listening to one at its best is like eavesdropping on four intelligent people engaged in a scintillating conversation. And that’s been true every time I’ve heard this ensemble perform.”

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (NY Times) and striking sound world has made her “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music” (NPR). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material – it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow.

Anna’s “detailed and powerful” (Guardian) orchestral writing has garnered her awards from the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, the Nordic Council, and the UK’s Ivors Academy, as well as commissions by many of the world’s top orchestras.

Schubert:
String Quartet No.13 in A minor, D.804, 'Rosamunde' (38’)
Anna Thorvaldsdottir:
Rituals (UK Premiere) (21’)
Today’s best hope for the future of the string quartet

The Wall Street Journal

Danish Quartet b&W portrait

About The Danish String Quartet

The Quartet’s playing reflects impeccable musicianship, sophisticated artistry, exquisite clarity of ensemble, and, above all, an expressivity inextricably bound to the music, from Haydn to Shostakovich to contemporary scores. Performances bring a rare musical spontaneity, giving audiences the sense of hearing even treasured canon repertoire as if for the first time, and exuding a palpable joy in music-making that have made them enormously in-demand on concert stages throughout the world. The recipient of many awards and prestigious appointments, including Musical America’s 2020 Ensemble of the Year and the Borletti-Buitoni Trust, the Danish String Quartet was named in 2013 as BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists and appointed to the The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two).

The Danish String Quartet are Frederik Øland (Violin); Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen (Violin); Asbjørn Nørgaard (Viola) and Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin (Cello)

The Danish are remarkable, as ever – capable of intense blend, extreme dynamic variation (in which they seem glued together), perfect intonation even on harmonics, and constant vitality and flow

Gramophone