It’s an exacting programme requiring grace, grit and clarity and the Danish players sound terrific – lithe and glassy in the Abrahamsen, richer in the Nørgård, able to capture the picturesque watery shimmer of the Adès but also the slime and murk below the surface. It’s a sophisticated performance.
Kate Molleson, The Guardian
Mit dieser Zusammenstellung von drei frühen Quartettkompositionen präsentiert das Danish String Quartet eine wirklich interessante Werkauswahl, vor allem aber bleibt es sich treu und setzt auf seine unverwechselbaren Stärken: auf risikofreudiges, gespanntes, kontrastreiches und überaus präzises Musizieren. So versprüht diese CD musikalische Aufbruchsstimmung und Jugendlichkeit – und sei es als Sehnsuchtsprojektion Arkadiens.
Meret Forster, BR Klassik
The intriguing program offered on Adès/Nørgård/Abrahamsen, by the Danish String Quartet, addresses the importance of the medium and the genre in works by three prominent European composers of three different generations. The pieces were all written when their respective composers (Englishman Thomas Adès and Danish composers Per Nørgård and Hans Abrahamsen) were around 20 years old. Each piece looks forward into its composer’s future, while at the same time looking back into a collective past. […] The Danish String Quartet, composed of violinists Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen and Frederik Øland, violist Asbjørn Nørgaard, and cellist Frederik Sjölin, gives authoritative and sensitive performances of all three works. ECM’s sound has a great deal of warmth.
Steve Hicken, Burning Ambulance
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. The listener is apt to be struck by how well the two outer works on the program go together […] The playing of the quartet itself, tense but relaxing periodically into utter lightness, is a major attraction, as is the crystalline sound from ECM, under the direction of the great Manfred Eicher. Highly recommended.
James Manheim, All Music
Even if you know nothing about the Danish String Quartet, after listening to their latest album, it is clear that their capital strengths are versatility, sensitivity, and humility. Throughout this release, their inexhaustible flexibility, as well as their clearly attentive and humble collaborative spirit, show that this group of Scandinavians represents the acme of musical professionalism.
Seth Tompkins, Second Inversion
Das Dänische Streichquartett scheut kein Risiko. Muss es auch nicht, denn der Klang bleibt immer intensiv und ausdrucksstark, beispielsweise bei den kleinen dynamischen Rückungen am Beginn des zweiten Abrahamsen-Prelude. Selbst beißende Harmonien werden hier nicht plump ins Schaufenster der Moderne gestellt, sondern in ein Ganzes, eine Erzählung eingebettet, und sei sie noch so knapp formuliert. Eine berauschende, innovative Aufnahme.
Christoph Vratz, Fono Forum
The Danish are remarkable, as ever – capable of intense blend, extreme dynamic variation (in which they seem glued together), perfect intonation even on harmonics, and constant vitality and flow.
Andrew Mellor, Gramophone
De Denen tonen zich extreem flexibel binnen een gevarieerd palet. Ze bewegen zich vrij over de snaren, houden tergend precies het ritme in de gaten en blinken uit in een subliem gevoel voor hoe je samenspeelt: glashelder, pretentieloos, gedisciplineerd, niet het kwartet op de voorgrond, maar de muziek. Logisch natuurlijk, maar allerminst vanzelfsprekend.
(The Danes show themselves extremely flexible within a wide range. They move freely across the strings, keep excruciatingly eye on the exact rhythm and excel in a sublime sense of how to play together: clear, unpretentious, disciplined, not the quartet to the fore, but the music. And that makes sense, of course, but is not self-evident.)
Fredrike Berntsen, Trouw
In the Danes’ hands the Elgarian ‘O Albion’ sheds its pale shroud and breaks the heart, while drunken pizzicatos and slithering dissolution in ‘Auf dem Wasser zu singen’ have a thrilling abandon, and ‘tango mortale’ comes at you with the force of a nightmare. What’s fascinating is how these exquisite visions fugitives are clear kin to Abrahamsen’s kaleidoscopic ‘10 Preludes’ (1973). These terse miniatures seem to ask questions about the nature of composition at that point in time, answering each with probing wit, captured here with bristling style.
Helen Wallace, BBC Music Magazine
The thread connecting these works by two of Denmark’s leading contemporary composers, Hans Abrahamsen and Bent Sørensen, is the accordion playing of Frode Haltli. Three of the pieces here were composed for Haltli; the fourth, Sørensen’s charming Sigrid’s Lullaby, was originally a piano piece and transfers comfortably enough to accordion. […] In Abrahamsen’s solo-accordion Air, song, or rather multiple songs, are in the forefront of the music. Enchanted bundles of melody are separated by halting chordal sequences that eventually peter out inconsequentially, while in the Three Little Nocturnes, the accordion threads its hesitant, fractured lines, sometimes wistful, sometimes manic, through clouds of the Arditti Quartet’s harmonics, until they finally reach the world of glassy reflections inhabited by so much of Abrahamsen’s finest music.
Andrew Clements, The Guardian
Op de cd Air spannen de strijkers van het Arditti Quartet en de Trondheim Soloists samen met de accordeon van Frode Haltli - een verrassende combinatie die vervreemdende momenten bewerkstelligt. Tastend zoekt Abrahamsen zijn weg in een universum vol verglijdende tonen, schemerig licht en waterverfachtige halftinten.
(On the CD Air the strings of the Arditti Quartet and the Trondheim Soloists tighten together with the accordion of Frode Haltli - a surprising combination that brings about alienating moments. Abrahamsen is groping his way in a universe full of gliding tones, dim light and watercolor-like halftones.)
Biëlla Luttmer, De Volkskrant
In a golden age for young string quartets — think JACK, Ébène, Escher,Attacca, Doric, Chiara, Spektral, Calidore and many, many more — the Danish String Quartet has drawn almost unanimous critical praise, particularly for its performances of Nielsen, Beethoven and others with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. On record, it has set down roguish Haydn and poised Brahms, as well as Scandinavian folk music, a Dacapo release called ‘Wood Works,’ and an outstanding survey of first quartets by Thomas Adès, Per Norgard and Hans Abrahamsen, on ECM.
David Allen, The New York Times
The Danish string Quartet players, who are fiercely lauded at the moment, craft confident, spellbinding performances, at times radiating with the kid of steely energy aligned with rock, and at others achieving a delicate, enigmatic, and at times haunting character.
Cristina Schreil, Strings
