Danish String Quartet

In the talented hands of the Danish String Quartet these ’Wood Works’ - traditional Nordic folksongs and dances - are buffed and polished to a glossy concert-hall sheen. Contemporary arrangements galvanise soft-grained melodic wood with textural metal, reimagining their source material with obvious affection and more than a dash of Scandi-cool.

The latest ECM album to feature pianist Ethan Iverson – following last year’s duo recording with saxophonist Mark Turner, Temporary Kings, and two lauded discs with the Billy Hart Quartet – presents the Brooklyn-based artist at the head of his own quartet in a program of standards and blues, recorded live at Manhattan’s famed Village Vanguard. Iverson’s quartet for Common Practice features as its prime melodic voice the veteran Tom Harrell, who was voted Trumpeter of the Year in 2018 by the U.S. Jazz Journalists Association. Iverson extols the quality of poetic “vulnerability” in Harrell’s playing, particularly in such ballads as “The Man I Love” and “Polka Dots and Moonbeams,” two of the album’s highlights. Common Practice also courses with an effervescent swing, thanks to the top-flight rhythm team of bassist Ben Street and drummer Eric McPherson, whose subtle invention helps drive Denzil Best’s bebop groover “Wee” and two irresistibly bluesy Iverson originals.

Danish String Quartet - Thomas Adès, Per Norgård, Hans Abrahamsen (2016) {ECM New Series 2453}
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© 2016 ECM Records | ECM New Series 2453
Classical / Chamber Music

The Danish String Quartet has had some wildly original programming ideas; here they settle for just a well-thought-out set of contemporary pieces. All three of these string quartets are early works by composers who have since gone on to renown; at the time of the album's 2016 release, Hans Abrahamsen was gaining lots of attention from well beyond his native Denmark.

Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen wrote his first three string quartets in 1959 and his 14th and last in 2013, three years before he died. This first volume in a new cycle comes from an ensemble coached by Tim Frederiksen (he who gave us the Nightingale Quartet) at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. The Nordic Quartet gave their graduation performance at the Academy last autumn.

The music of Austrian composer Robert Fuchs attracted faint praise from Brahms, who supported Fuchs but remarked that he was "never really profound." Brahms was notoriously stingy with praise for other composers, however, and the comment is not quite fair. Yes, the Fuchs Clarinet Quintet in E flat major, Op. 102, recorded here is clearly modeled on the Brahms Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115, that accompanies it on the album, right down to the episodic series of variations that makes the finale.

This CPO disc contains four pieces by Sofia Gubaidulina, a Russian-Tartar composer of singularly original and individualistic music. These are her three string quartets written up to 1993, and her "String Trio". Performances are given by The Danish Quartet, the ensemble of Tim Frederiksen (violin I), Arne Balk-Moeller (violin II), Claus Myrup (viola), and Henrik Brendstrup (cello). Sofia Gubaidulina's works for string quartet and string trio have always seemed to me to lie at the outskirts of her oeuvre, even though they contain the elements common to all her work that we have come to love. This is perhaps because of their intensity, a single-minded dedication to certain mystical principles without the variety of longer or larger works.

This disc features music by cousins Horneman and Hamerik, both of who were never appreciated in their native Denmark during their lifetimes. The Arild Quartet is formed of leading musicians from the Royal Danish Orchestra and are one of the leading chamber ensembles in Denmark. This is the Arild Quartet’s first recording with Dacapo.