Concert review: Danish Quartet

In the United States, there’s a tree called the cottonwood, which in late spring releases small, snowy tufted seeds, floating gently to the ground. That image came to mind during the Danish Quartet’s reading of Schubert’s last quartet, no.15, which opened this tautly conceived programme. With violinist Yura Lee replacing Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, who was on parental leave, the ensemble displayed litheness, coupled with eerily exact intonation, all in high relief against an audience that was clearly transfixed and blessedly silent. (Well, mostly: two errant mobile phone rings during non-musical moments were met with humour more than annoyance.)

Afterwards came Doppelgänger by Bent Sørensen, one of four composers commissioned by the ensemble to respond to Schubert’s late works. In an ethereal riff on that last quartet, Sørensen’s creation paradoxically extends and compresses Schubert’s language, aided by gentle glissandos and microtonal purrs. At times the shimmering textures echoed Schubert’s, as if Sørensen had dropped a pebble into a pond, watching the harmonies mirror each other in widening circles.

If all this sounds overly poetic, that was the spellbinding nature of the occasion. To close came the ensemble’s arrangement of ‘Der Doppelgänger’, the penultimate song from Schubert’s Schwanengesang cycle, executed with the same tenderness that flowed through the entire concert. As a welcome encore came Nielsen’s harmonisation of the old Danish hymn, Mit hjerte altid vanker (‘My Heart Always Wanders’), offering a chorale-like reverence to close an extraordinary evening.

BRUCE HODGES