From Denmark with Serious Musical Love

World-Renowned Danish String Quartet Makes for Another of Its Many Welcome Return Visits, at Campbell Hall

By Josef Woodard Fri Jan 24, 2025 | 01:05pm

The Danish String Quartet (DSQ), widely regarded as being in the uppermost echelon of the world’s active quartets, has graced Santa Barbara stages often enough in the past several years to be considered an institution-in-the-making. And far from ever having worn out its welcome, the DSQ seems to have baked in a renewable enthusiasm in town.

Good news again greets us with DSQ’s appearance, hosted by UCSB Arts & Lectures at Campbell Hall on Friday, January 24. In its now 20 years as a group, DSQ has embodied a refreshing and shifting programming agenda, which Santa Barbara audiences have witnessed first-hand. Its four-year cycle of Schubert-based programs called Doppelgänger — including newly commissioned works — closed out last season.

This time around, the quartet program will be more of an eclectic tapestry of old and new music, with Stravinsky, Mozart, and Shostakovich mixing it up with the group’s penchant for Scandinavian folk-based material as heard on their acclaimed latest album, Keel Road. We checked in with DSQ violist Asbjørn Nørgaard for an update.

Danish String Quartet | Photo: Caroline Bittencourt

I realize you are globetrotters by nature, but does Santa Barbara have a special or sentimental resonance for the group? A short answer, yes! We have been fortunate to be able to perform — and return — to many amazing places around the globe, but Santa Barbara is one of the cities we have most often stopped by. We regularly tour the U.S. in November or February. For some reason, that is how the concert seasons seem to fall. And it never fails to make an impression to fly out of the dark Scandinavian winter and suddenly be on a beach on the U.S. West Coast and perform music for a hall full of friendly faces.

Your Doppelgänger and the earlier Beethoven-grounded Prisms series seem to neatly convey your group’s broad-minded affinities for standard repertoire across eras, as well as expanding the quartet repertoire into the contemporary zone. Would you say that was always part of the group’s modus operandi or even manifesto, so to speak? We don’t have a manifesto, and we don’t preach; we are still just some Scandinavian dudes who love what a string quartet can do. Some of the greatest works of art crafted by humanity happens to be music composed for string quartet. And if no one plays this music, it would be like losing “Mona Lisa” or if the Sistine Chapel suddenly evaporated. But the string quartet, as an ensemble, is also just capable of so many things.

We have seen what groups such as the Kronos Quartet, the Jack Quartet, and Brooklyn Rider are doing. We would find ourselves bored if we didn’t constantly try to push the limits of what our quartet does.

Keel Road embodies the group’s deep affinity for Danish and Scandinavian folk music while dipping into contemporary classical arrangement ideas. Did you go into this project with a particular concept in mind, or did it evolve as you went? Through our work with Danish folk music, we have often encountered tunes that exist in Denmark but also in many other countries and traditions. So, we had a loose idea to try to follow some of these tunes around and create an album that would somehow connect the different musical traditions.

But honestly, most of the project evolved as we went. For us, it is almost never fruitful to start a musical process with ideas that are too set, this applies to Beethoven quartets as well as folk music.

Are there other large-scale projects coming down the DSQ pike similar to Prisms and Doppelgänger? What else is on the horizon? We have a huge Shostakovich project brewing that will premiere in Copenhagen in May 2025 and hopefully tour internationally in the seasons to come. We also have an exciting project with the Danish Girls Choir (that we played with at Yhe Granada Theatre) with some huge commissions and a very unique program.

In Santa Barbara last year, three of the strongest concerts to my ears were your group, the Kronos at 50, and the Jack Quartet at 20. Is there something about the compactness and intimacy of a string quartet — especially one with a sense of a mission beyond just playing the standards — that promotes longevity? We love the Kronos and the Jacks, so it is an honor to share this shout-out.

We do believe that a string quartet is simply a brilliant, flexible ensemble that can comfortably navigate music of all times and genres. Today so much of classical music is anchored in “institutions.” The Opera. The Symphony. They are great and all. But with a string quartet, you get really close. Four humans, acoustic instruments — that’s all. If you are in a room with a string quartet, everything can happen.