Postcard from Kerteminde: Chamber Music at Lundsgaard

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The air is hazy with crop dust from threshing machines as I arrive in Kerteminde, a small harbour town flanked by farmland, 90 minutes by train west of Copenhagen. Denmark is at the tail end of a heatwave and teenagers are jumping into the sea off the bridge that connects the town with the island of Funen, while others swim or sunbathe on the banks.

I am here for Chamber Music at Lundsgaard, a four-day festival of eight concerts and three talks in early August 2022, spearheaded by artistic directors Trio con Brio Copenhagen – sisters Soo-Jin Hong (violin) and Soo-Kyung Hong (cello), and Jens Elvekjaer (piano, and husband of Soo-Kyung). This festival has been held in and around the beautiful Lundsgaard Estate, a mile from Kerteminde, since 2015. For 2022 the programme is built around the theme of Inheritance, tracing the lineage of musical influences from Bach to 20th-century composers. Such a broad remit, of course, could mean that almost anything goes repertoire-wise, so it’s a testament to the programming and the first-rate artists that each concert makes sense as an individual concept.