Originally composed of four siblings, the present incarnati of the ensemble, with second violinist Rainer Schmidt the only non-Hagen family member in the group, has played as a unit for more than 30 years. They barely seem old enough for that to be true; and certainly there was no hint of jaded routine in their approach to early works by three composers of differing styles but a shared youthful zest.
David Finckel and Wu Han are chamber music royalty. On Sunday afternoon, the couple — heads of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Music@Menlo festival and the record company ArtistLed — reigned at the Barns at Wolf Trap with a wildly engaging performance of all five Beethoven cello sonatas.
Save for a handful of renegades and visionaries, classical musicians tend to put fidelity to the score close to the top of their priorities. That comes with certain constraints—especially when playing works like Ludwig van Beethoven’s string quartets, which have been analyzed, performed, and reconsidered over and over again during the course of the past 200 years. So it’s refreshing to discover that the young musicians of the Danish String Quartet have a new way of looking at this repertoire.
They bonded around a football stuck in a tree. “It was our first challenge as a string quartet,” quips DSQ violist Asbjørn Nørgaard. Several years and first prizes later, the foursome faces a different challenge: a complete Beethoven cycle and recordings of the late quartets for ECM.
I’ve been following this extraordinary group for years, but I really understood their mojo only after I met them all in their basement studio at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen.
Angelin Preljocaj continues his folkloric narratives with La Fresque, subtitled after its inspiration, the eponymous medieval Chinese tale, The Mural, from the collection Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling, first published in 1740.
Parisian choreographer Angelin Preljocaj sold out Europe's largest performing arts venue with his modern ballet, La Fresque (2016) on November 18th, walking onstage after the show to receive the Honorary Award from Istanbul's Theater Festival at Zorlu Center PSM.
Although they have long lived in the United States and travel widely, there is some sense, perhaps only felt locally, that the St. Lawrence String Quartet is “our” quartet. Probably this feeling comes from their long connection with Banff, the Banff Centre, the Banff International String Quartet Competition, their winning of the competitions, violinist Geoff Nuttall’s presence as a recent juror for the competition, and Barry Schiffman, the director of the competition, who was the original second violinist of the quartet.
In its 27-year history, the St. Lawrence String Quartet has staked its place as not just the leading foursome of Canadian origins (though its members reside principally in California) but indeed as one of the most notable in the world. One cannot escape feeling that every note, rest, bow stroke, breath, and phrase has been poked, prodded, worried about, argued over, and not yet put to rest — without sacrificing the sense of spontaneity in performance.
The St. Lawrence String Quartet was once again in town. For my money, the group is the most exciting string quartet working today. It plays with vim and vigor and amplitude of feeling and sound and keen intelligence. It “brings it,” as some people say.
