Danish String Quartet Makes Baltimore Debut at Shriver Hall Concert Series in Schumann, Schubert, and 'An Alleged Suite'

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Contact: Katy Salomon | Morahan Arts and Media
katy@morahanartsandmedia.com | 863.660.2214

Shriver Hall Concert Series Presents the Baltimore Debut of the
Danish String Quartet in Schumann, Schubert, and More – January 23

In-Person Season Offers Livestream Option to all Ticket Holders

“This is one of the best quartets before the public today.” – The Washington Post

www.shriverconcerts.org | www.danishquartet.com

Baltimore, MD (December 15, 2021) —  Shriver Hall Concert Series (SHCS) — Baltimore’s premier presenter of chamber music ensembles and solo recitalists — continues its 2021-22 season on Sunday, January 23, 2022 at 5:30pm with a performance by the dazzling, Grammy-nominated Danish String Quartet. The Quartet makes its Baltimore debut in a performance of Schumann’s poetic String Quartet in A Major, Op. 41, No. 3; a uniquely curated suite of dances by Charpentier, John Adams, and Blumenfeld titled An Alleged Suite; and Schubert’s posthumously-published final quartet, his String Quartet in G Major, D. 887.

Following a widely acclaimed digital 2020-21 season, Shriver Hall Concert Series offers all ticket holders the option to watch this season’s mainstage concerts live from home.

Of An Alleged Suite, Danish String Quartet violinist Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen says, “The suite of dances is in itself not a new thing. In fact it was one of the predominant musical forms in the Baroque era. Typically, it consisted of about seven movements of different Central European dance types. The idea behind our dance suite was to add some new ingredients to the basic ‘recipe.’ We still have seven movements, although some are of questionable ‘danceability;’ John Adams (one of the featured composers in the mix), calls them ‘alleged’ dances. We have ingredients spanning nearly 400 years, with music by French baroque composer Carpentier all the way up to contemporary minimalism. A slow Russian sarabande by the rather unknown Felix Blumenfeld adds some dark sweetness to the dish and a rural Swedish folk tune in our own arrangement also finds its way into the mixture. Music and dance have always been intertwined, and we hope the the audience will enjoy our dance suite ‘version 2.0.’"

Concert Information
Danish String Quartet (Baltimore Debut)
Sunday, January 23, 2022 at 5:30pm
Shriver Hall | 3400 N. Charles Street | Baltimore, MD 21218
Tickets: $44 for seated ticket or home livestream.
Link: https://www.shriverconcerts.org/concert/danish-string-quartet/

SCHUMANN: String Quartet in A Major, Op. 41, No. 3
“An Alleged Suite”
     Prelude - CHARPENTIER: Prelude
     Allemande - JOHN ADAMS: Pavane: She’s so fine
     Courante - Trad. Polska
     Sarabande - BLUMENFELD: Sarabande
     Gavotte - JOHN ADAMS: Stubble Crotchet
     Gigue 1 - CHARPENTIER: Gigue française
     Gigue 2 - JOHN ADAMS: Toot Nipple
SCHUBERT: String Quartet in G Major, D. 887

About Danish String Quartet
Among today’s many exceptional chamber music groups, the GRAMMY®-nominated Danish String Quartet continuously asserts its preeminence. 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).

In 2021-2022, the Danish String Quartet introduce DOPPELGÄNGER, an ambitious 4-year international commissioning project. DOPPELGÄNGER pairs world premieres from four renowned composers—Bent Sørensen, Lotta Wennäkoski, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Thomas Adès—with four major works from the masterful chamber music repertoire of Schubert. Each season, the Danish String Quartet will perform a world premiere on a program with its doppelgänger—the Schubert quartet or quintet that inspired it—culminating in the premiere of a quintet by Adès, after the great String Quintet in C major.

The DOPPELGÄNGER pieces are commissioned by the Danish String Quartet with the support of Carnegie Hall, Cal Performances, UC Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures, Vancouver Recital Society, Flagey in Brussels, and Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam. The first commission, composed by Bent Sørensen and inspired by Schubert’s quartet in G Major (D.887), is scheduled to premiere in 2021.

As part of a three-year residency, the Danish String Quartet brought a series of five concerts, which mirror the programs in its ongoing recording project with ECM New Series, PRISM, to La Jolla Music Society in November 2019. Each PRISM program is an exploration of the symbiotic musical and contextual relationships between Bach fugues, Beethoven string quartets, and works by Shostakovich, Schnittke, Bartók, Mendelssohn, and Webern, forming an expertly curated musical evolution within each individual program and across the entire PRISM repertory. Prism I, the first disc of this five-album project for the ECM label, was released in September 2018 and garnered a GRAMMY® nomination in the category of Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for the group’s recordings of Beethoven’s Op. 127 in E-flat Major, Bach’s Fugue in E-flat Major (arranged by Mozart), and Shostakovich’s final string quartet, No. 15 in E-flat minor. Prism II was subsequently released in September 2019 to rave reviews including a five-star review from BBC Music Magazine, “Best Classical Music of 2019” from New York Times, and “Classical Music You Must Hear” from Apple Music. Prism III—featuring Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131; Bartók’s String Quartet No. 1; and Bach’s Fugue in C-sharp minor, BWV 849 from The Well-Tempered Clavier—was released in March 2021.

The Danish String Quartet returned to North America in the 2019-2020 season as one of the most prominent musical voices in the monumental celebrations of Beethoven’s 250th year. With two sweeping North American tours, the Danish engaged its expansive audience in programming centered around the towering Beethoven string quartets, as well as many important works which inspired, and were inspired by, these revered giants of the classical canon. The Danish returned to Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as the featured string quartet performing the entire Beethoven cycle over the course of six concerts in February 2020. European engagements included dates throughout Denmark, Germany, Italy, and Brussels.

The group takes an active role in reaching new audiences through special projects. In 2007, they established the DSQ Festival, now in its 12th year, which takes place in an intimate and informal setting at Copenhagen’s Bygningskulturens Hus. The 2019 DSQ Festival featured an array of meticulously curated programs including such guests as pianists Vikingur Olafsson and Wu Qian, violinist Alexi Kenney, and violist Jennifer Stumm. In 2016, they inaugurated a new music festival, Series of Four, in which they both perform and invite colleagues—the Ebène Quartet, mandolin player Chris Thile, among others—to appear at the venerable Danish Radio Concert Hall. Concerts this season include collaborations with pianist Gabriel Kahane and violinist Pekka Kuusisto.

Since its debut in 2002, the Danish String Quartet has demonstrated a special affinity for Scandinavian composers, from Carl Nielsen to Hans Abrahamsen, alongside music of Mozart and Beethoven. The Quartet’s musical interests also encompass Nordic folk music, the focus of Wood Works, an album of traditional Scandinavian folk music, released by Dacapo in 2014. As a follow-up, the Danish String Quartet released Last Leaf for ECM, an album of traditional Scandinavian folk music. This recording was one of the top classical albums of 2017, as chosen by NPR, Spotify and The New York Times, among others.

Named Artist-in-Residence in 2006 by the Danish Radio, the Quartet was offered the opportunity to record the Nielsen string quartets at the Danish Radio Concert Hall. The two CDs, released in 2007 and 2008 on the Dacapo label, garnered enthusiastic praise for their first recordings—“these Danish players have excelled in performances of works by Brahms, Mozart and Bartók in recent years. But they play Nielsen’s quartets as if they owned them,” noted The New York Times. In 2012, the Danish String Quartet released a recording of Haydn and Brahms quartets on the German AVI-music label, for which they also received critical notice. “What makes the performance special is the maturity and calm of the playing, even during virtuosic passages that whisk by. This is music-making of wonderful ease and naturalness,” observed The New York Times.  Subsequently, they recorded works by Brahms and Robert Fuchs with clarinetist Sebastian Manz, released by AVI-music in 2014 and in 2017, an album with music of Thomas Adès, Per Nørgård, and Abrahamsen, the Quartet’s debut album on ECM.

The Danish String Quartet has received numerous citations and prizes, including First Prize in the Vagn Holmboe String Quartet Competition and the Charles Hennen International Chamber Music Competition in the Netherlands, as well as the Audience Prize at the Trondheim International String Quartet Competition in 2005.  In 2009, the Danish String Quartet won First Prize in the 11th London International String Quartet Competition, now known as the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet competition, and return to the celebrated London concert hall frequently. The Quartet was awarded the 2010 NORDMETALL-Ensemble Prize at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival in Germany, and in 2011, they received the Carl Nielsen Prize, the highest cultural honor in Denmark.

Violinists Frederik Øland and Rune Tonsgaard Sørenson and violist Asbjørn Nørgaard met as children at a music summer camp where they played soccer and made music together. As teenagers, they began the study of classical chamber music and were mentored by Tim Frederiksen of Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Academy of Music. In 2008, the three Danes were joined by Norwegian cellist Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin. www.danishquartet.com.

About Shriver Hall Concert Series
For more than 50 years, Shriver Hall Concert Series (SHCS) has been “Baltimore’s finest importer of classical music talent” (The Baltimore Sun) and the area’s premier presenter of chamber music ensembles and solo recitalists with a mission to craft performances and educational programs at the highest level of excellence. A 5-time recipient of Baltimore Magazine’s distinction “Best Classical Music” in its annual “Best of Baltimore” issue, the coveted subscription series features many of the world’s most renowned soloists and ensembles, presented in The Johns Hopkins University’s Shriver Hall.

Founded in 1966 by Dr. Ernest Bueding, a pharmacologist at The Johns Hopkins University, and a group of similarly dedicated music enthusiasts, SHCS set out to make an important contribution to the vitality of an already vibrant city. When flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal walked onto the stage of Shriver Hall for the first concert, more than 1,100 people witnessed the launch of what is now recognized as a remarkable success story: Shriver Hall Concert Series. In the succeeding years SHCS has presented hundreds of acclaimed and emerging international artists in classical chamber music and recitals and a legacy of important debuts and premieres. In addition, SHCS collaborates with local schools and subsidizes hundreds of student tickets each season.

The list of artists presented by SHCS is remarkable—Radu Lupu, Murray Perahia, Ewa Podlés, Maurizio Pollini, Jacqueline du Pré, Mstislav Rostropovich, Jordi Savall, András Schiff, Rudolf Serkin, Janos Starker, Daniil Trifonov, Lynn Harrell, Emmanuel Ax, Alban Berg Quartet, Guarneri Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Cleveland Quartet, and Quartetto Italiano, among many others. SHCS also has a history of championing important musicians early in their careers, including Richard Goode, Hilary Hahn, Hélène Grimaud, Dawn Upshaw, Lang Lang, and the Emerson String Quartet. Commissioned composers include Timo Andres, Sebastian Currier, Jonathan Leshnoff, James Lee III, Hannah Lash, and Nina C. Young.

Designed specifically for the community, SHCS offers the Discovery Series, a series of free concerts presented in venues throughout the region focused on artists emerging on the national and international scene. Artists featured include Narek Hakhnazaryan, Colin Currie, Xavier Foley, and the Dover Quartet. SHCS also offers the annual Spring Lecture Series, a series of free talks focused on annual topics related to the intersection of music and society, and a variety of student programs.

For more information, visit www.shriverconcerts.org.

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Photo Credit: Caroline Bittencourt