Danish String Quartet
Adès/Nørgård/Abrahamsen

Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen violin
Frederik Øland violin
Asbjørn Nørgaard viola
Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin violoncello
Recorded May 2015, Reitstadel Neumarkt in der Operpfalz
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher
U.S. release date: May 6, 2016

Although violinist Arnold Steinhardt of the Guarneri Quartet may have coined the term Indivisible by Fourto title his chamber music memoir, it would be just as fitting on the cover of the Danish String Quartet’s extraordinary ECM debut. The feeling of coherence achieved herein sheds new light on a longstanding genre in a program of gradual corporeality.

Harmonics and pizzicati constitute the building blocks of Arcadiana (1994) by British composer Thomas Adès. Violist Asbjørn Nørgaard forms the spine of its nascent stirrings, providing flexion and support to every change of comportment. Brief as they are, suspensions drop hints of their own volition, each a crumb of self-reflection. The fourth, entitled “Et… (tango mortale),” is the most jagged of these, while the tender sixth, “O Albion,” takes us into swaddling darkness. Gathering them requires initiations both declamatory and soothing, and reveals an underlying psychological realism. This is music that seeks, even as it is found.

The Quartetto Breve (1952) of Per Nørgård finds cellist Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin planting feet, thereby lending traction to the Danish composer’s robust sensitivity. Like a headlong rush slowed to the tempo of dissection, the opening Lento frames scenic changes with curatorial spirit. This fiercely diurnal piece reveals its truth, however, in the final Allegro risoluto: a space where playfulness ephemerally abounds yet feels indelible. Resolution is not a farewell, but a welcoming of change. Affirmation, angularity, and trembling prevail.

Violinists Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen and Frederik Øland are the arms and hands of Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen’s fascinating 10 Preludes (1973). Their opening lob casts us into a lake of voices. Abrahamsen possesses an uncanny ability to attune listeners to a heartbeat that cannot be heard from the outside, and emphasizes as much through his distinctly percussive palette. There’s much to discover in this color wheel of vignettes, at once flowing and interruptive. The eighth is especially wondrous and calms us for the final dance, by which indications of hieroglyphic proportion animate themselves in anticipation of the future.

In spite of the apparent influences (Nørgård drawing from the well of Bartók) and pedagogical relationships (Abrahamsen being the former’s pupil) documented in the album’s booklet, the music suggests its own associations by the power of an innate desire to be known. Let our ears, then, be the vessels worthy of their drink.