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The ninth quartet (Op.
- opens in dissonant despair, each crushing chord dropping inexorably onto the next.
Then, in a classic feint, the apparently endless slough suddenly opens into a bright C major clearing.
They seemed genuinely curious to know what came next, to keep up with the composers mercurial thoughts.
Performing the complete Beethoven quartets in 11 days is a mavens mountain.
The Danes seemed unfazed by all the reverence.
The genre had a mild history before Beethoven, rooted in background music.
But even in these first pieces, Beethoven is already willing to disturb the digestion.
A few days later, the ensemble reached 1806, when Beethoven published his Razumovsky quartets, Op.
But even here, the Danes remembered that what they do for a living is play.
(The fourth, cellist Fredrik Schyen Sjolin, grew up in Norway.)
You dont go there to achieve, but to develop for the sake of developing.
Its more of a society of amateur musicians, says land.
Those late-night summer sight-reading sessions spilled over into weekends during the school year, and companionship matured into professionalism.
Chamber music came naturally to hotshot musicians accustomed to channeling ambitions into a collective endeavor.
Srensen mentions the Law of Jante, a pan-Scandinavian prohibition against sticking out.
Maybe thats why Denmark doesnt have so many concerto soloists, he says.
In an orchestra its always like:You be the concertmaster.No,yoube the concertmaster, Nrgaard jokes.
That Jedi-like training ran headlong into their irreverence.
Denmark is a flat country, literally and also in our attitude towards authority, Nrgaard says.
That also applies to how you treat the classics.
You have the right to question the composers.
After all, they were just guys who wrote some good music.
Adds Srensen,Were basically a cover band.
Its an attitude that translates directly into their music-making.
For a dozen years, the quartet has organized its own October festival in a tiny hall in Copenhagen.
The pieces of a cardboard-and-plywood bar they built for the occasion sit jammed into a corner of their studio.
We grew up post-vinyl, so we dont always think a program has to be like an album.
We do Spotify concerts, Nrgaard says.
Their actualalbums, on the other hand, are distinctly albumlike.
Maybe thats how the Danes work too, but the effect is convincingly spontaneous.
The midpoint concert ended with the final fugue of the C Major quartet (Op.
3), executed at fighter jet speeds with an astounding mixture of nonchalance and intensity.
When they were done, the audience jumped with the thrill of having witnessed such a thing.
Were still the last guys standing.
