Header

Penn State College of Arts and Architecture
Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State

Event Slides Per Node 1415

  • "One of the best quartets before the public today." Washington Post
  • The members of the string quartet sit and smile at each other while holding their instruments and bows.

Danish String Quartet

7:30 pm Friday, April 6, 2018

In the 1990s, as children, three of them met at a summer music camp in the Danish countryside. The youngest students in attendance, they soon became friends and continued to get together to play music in the years that followed. Two decades later, these Scandinavian string players — three Danes and a Norwegian who joined the mix in 2008 — constitute “one of the best quartets before the public today” (Washington Post).

In its Penn State debut, the Danish String Quartet — violinists Frederik Øland and Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, violist Asbjørn Nørgaard, and cellist Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin — will perform Béla Bartók’s String Quartet No. 1; Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 7, Op. 59, No. 1; and a selection of Nordic folk tunes from the ensemble’s albums Wood Works (2014) and Last Leaf (2017).

“In the talented hands of the Danish String Quartet these ‘Wood Works’ — traditional Nordic folksongs and dances — are buffed and polished to a glossy concert-hall sheen,” writes a Gramophone reviewer.

Winner of the London (now Wigmore Hall) International String Quartet Competition in 2009, the ensemble has earned a reputation for its integrated sound, impeccable intonation, judicious balance, and “rampaging energy” (The New Yorker).

The quartet’s ECM Records debut, Adès/Nørgård/Abrahamsen (2016), earned a five-star rating from a reviewer for The Guardian, who praises the album as “an exacting program requiring grace, grit, and clarity.”

“Do not lose track of this group,” writes a Boston Globe critic. “Even by today’s high standards, it offers something very special.”

Artistic Viewpoints will not be offered before this performance.

Adult $44
University Park Student $15
18 and Younger $34

support provided by
John L. Brown Jr. and Marlynn Steele Sidehamer Endowment

media sponsor
WPSU

Artist Websites: 

Secondary Events on Each Event

Master class featuring Danish String Quartet

10:30 am Saturday, April 7, 2018

110 Music Building I

Free and open to the public

The public is invited to observe as members of the Danish String Quartet lead a ninety-minute master class for Penn State School of Music chamber ensemble students. Professor James Lyon hosts the session.