In what’s become an annual tradition, the Danish String Quartet returned to Zankel Hall Friday night with their annual April recital. Except, this was hardly a recital by any standard definition. As has been their wont for the past 22 years, the DSQ – Frederik Øland, Violin; Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, Violin; Asbjørn Nørgaard, Viola; Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, Cello – has been upending conventional chamber music presentation with their own distinct brand of Nordic cool, equally at home playing Beethoven or traditional music.
This time, the DSQ was joined by the equally-renowned Danish National Girls Choir: 60 girls between the ages of 16-22 who have established themselves as one of the world’s finest women’s choirs: famous not just for their extraordinary singing but for their theatricality, moving choreographically around the stage while singing off book. Founded in 1938, the DSQ has been collaborating with the Danish Girls Choir since 2014; Friday’s concert marked their Carnegie Hall debut.
Led by the Danish Girls Choir’s music director Charlotte Rowan – who was visibly pregnant with her soon-to-be-born son – the program was a mix of contemporary classical and traditional music. Dressed in flowing blue gowns, the choir processed in accompanied by Sørensen’s solo violin. They carried with them a long blue train, which they spread out into a large circle in the center of the stage. Once the remaining players of the DSQ took their seats, they burst out into the “Allemande” from Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Partita for 8 Voices, which somehow is now 14 years old. Later, they also performed Caroline’s “And So” from Is a Rose.
Appropriate for this choir, music by Nordic women was featured prominently, including Finland’s Lotta Wennakoski, Iceland’s Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Denmark’s Astrid Sonne, whose “How Far” showed Shaw’s influence with it’s loosely gliding tones and hypnotic texture.
Several folk tunes – including a song about the 12th century Danish queen Dagmar and a Danish wedding tune – were arranged by violinist Sørensen, who also contributed his own “Once a Shoemaker” from the DSQ’s latest release, “Keel Road”. Also appearing on that album was the sea shanty “Captain O’Kane” by the 18th century Irish bard Turlough O’Carolan, which the girls sang while waving the blue veil into sea-like waves.
The entire second half was devoted to David Lang’s new song cycle “in wildness”, adapted from an essay by Thoreau and a pair of poems by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish fairy tale writer who also provided David with the material for his Pulitzer Prize-winning “little match girl passion”, premiered in Zankel back in 2007 (I was there.) Ostensibly a paean to walking in nature, Lang pulls out the more pointed elements of Thoreau’s essay, warning of our “so-called improvements,” such as cutting down forests to build houses. The music was simultaneously hypnotic and unsettling, punctuated by David’s signature pauses.
David – whose been busy this spring with the premiere last month of his oratorio the wealth of nations at the NY Phil – was in the hall on Friday, bounding around the stage to greet as many singers as possible before taking his bows. (Those interested in hearing more of David’s music should check out Bang on a Can’s 5th annual Long Play Festival at the end of the month.)
With the possible exception of the Kronos Quartet, the DSQ stands alone in their constant quest to elevate what’s possible in a string quartet “recital”, unafraid to cede their stage prominence to another ensemble, or play music that typically belongs in a pub or party. Which is precisely what makes them the essential string quartet for our time.
More pics on Instagram.