Danish String Quartet - cancelled

Music as a call for solidarity

In response to the war situation in Ukraine, the Danish String Quartet will open the evening symbolically with Drop after Drop by Maxim Shalygin. This Ukrainian-Dutch composer wrote his new string quartet especially for Festivals for Compassion, an initiative of the Dutch Wonderfeel Festival. Festivals and cultural institutions throughout Europe and beyond, including Klarafestival and Flagey, unanimously condemn war and call for peace. By performing Shalygin's new string quartet, cultural organisations all over the world show their support and solidarity with their Ukrainian colleagues, artists and all those who suffer from a futile war. Drop after drop will travel from festival to festival, and will be shared online as an ode to compassion and an act of solidarity in these dark times. Composer Maxim Shalygin writes about his new string quartet: "Since the first day of the war in Ukraine, a terrible pain has settled inside me. Every time I close my eyes, I want to wake up from this terrible dream... but alas, it is not a dream. Drop after drop embodies that pain and the memories of my childhood, when my relatives were telling me about the war years and sung wartime songs. I hear those songs inside me again and I wish they would stop…”

This evening, the Danish String Quartet begins the Belgian stage of its four-year-long Doppelgänger project. For the duration of this project, the internationally renowned quartet unveils a new programme each year, in which one of the chamber works of Franz Schubert is each time associated with a new compositional commission. The composers engaged by the quartet are of the highest calibre: Bent Sørensen (Denmark), Lotta Wennäkoski (Finland), Anna Thorvaldsdóttir (Iceland) and Thomas Adès (United Kingdom). Each of these composers finds inspiration for his/ her new composition in Schubert’s String Quintet or his last three string quartets. The new works thus become Doppelgängers of the celebrated masterpieces of the past. They reflect the reciprocal influence of earlier musical works, and now in terms of interpretation and composition.

That the Danish String Quartet begins with the String Quartet No. 15 in G major is no coincidence. This last completed quartet of Schubert’s is not only one of his most important works, it is also a high point in the history of the genre. Moreover, according to violist Asbjørn Nørgaard, Schubert’s quartet takes a Doppelgänger-like position relative to Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131: ‘Both composers worked on these two pillars of the genre during almost the same months in 1826, and they were furthermore composed in the same city and less than a kilometre from each other’. It was after hearing this Opus 131 that Schubert, it is said, proclaimed: ‘After this, what is left for us to write?’ Contemporary composer Bent Sørensen shares a similar admiration for Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15, which he first heard at a very early age.

A distinctive sense of time

As a teenager, one of Schubert’s favourite pastimes was writing string quartets. Most of his early quartets served either for the exercise of a particular style or technique, or were written for home use, when friends or family members gathered in a small circle to perform the music. Schubert himself often played viola at such performances. In this context, by 1816 he had completed eleven string quartets.      During the following eight years, he composed no further quartets except for his Quartettsatz, the first movement of his unfinished String Quartet No. 12. His last three completed quartets date back to the years 1824-1826. In 1824 he finished the quartets Rosamunde (No. 13) and Death and the Maiden (No. 14). He composed his final String Quartet No. 15 in G major in June 1826, in the astonishingly short period of 10 days. Schubert gives this last quartet almost symphonic proportions by greatly expanding the lengths of the movements (the opening movement alone lasts around 20 minutes) and through the highly contrasting interaction of rhythms, dynamics and textures. This opening movement Allegro molto moderato is characterised by the use of dotted rhythms and tremolos, giving the music an uncommonly tense character. Here Schubert experimented with alternating major and minor keys, creating a musical interplay between light and dark, somber and triumphant. This tonal ambivalence is only resolved in the final bars where the key of G major is confirmed.  The second movement Andante un poco moto is also greatly expanded. The elegiac character with which the movement begins is interrupted in an agitated manner in the middle section by the dotted rhythms and tremolos of the opening movement. The following scherzo Allegro vivace — Trio. Allegretto is light for the most part, while the slower trio (a Ländler) forms a moment of rest in the quartet. Here also, the tonal ambiguity reappears and there are numerous references to the tension-filled dotted rhythms of the other movements. These are precursors for the powerful and highly agitated final movement. Schubert based this Allegro Assai (like the final movement of the Death and the Maiden String Quartet) on a wild Italian tarantella. Only in this final movement does it become clear which character wins the contest between light and dark: in grand and triumphant style, Schubert ends his greatest quartet in the key of G major.        

This last quartet of Schubert’s also holds special significance for the Danish String Quartet. According to violist Nørgaard, performing it alters time perception for both players and public: ‘One way or another, you become trapped in the tangle of Time, not knowing if you’ve been playing for a minute or for eight hours’. ‘It comes about because Schubert’s style is repetitive. The same melodies recur again and again, but each time in another fashion, with a slightly different tone colour’.

A musical hall of mirrors

‘The influences of the past touch an enigma within myself wherein they melt away’. This is how Danish composer Bent Sørensen (°1958) describes his relationship with the great exemplars from the past. His style is usually distinguished by an introspective, elegant, occasionally even meditative character, whereby he works with microtonal sonic states. This is not the first time that Sørensen and the Danish String Quartet have worked together. The quartet performed his Dancers and Disappearance (2018) for accordion and quartet, and his piano quintet Rosenbad - Papillons (2013). With Doppelgänger, Sørensen returns to the string quartet genre after a long hiatus. His last four quartets were written for the Arditti String Quartet between 1984 and 1993.

Doppelgänger dates from the spring of 2020 and is inspired by the above-mentioned tonal ambivalence between major and minor keys in Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15. The work contains, according to the composer, ‘many pure G major and G minor sonorities’ which he confronts with ‘a certain resistance’. He further describes his two-part work as composed with mirrors that can be found throughout the movements, both internally as well as in the macrostructure: ‘Shadows of elements utilised return to create new contours. Thus a fugue occurs that can later be experienced from another direction, because it is played backwards. I thought here of Schubert, of his struggle with fugues. I too went through that struggle with this music’. The long development passages and continual change of pulse arising as a consequence, result during performance in a similar perception of altered time as with Schubert’s quartet. Violist Nørgaard writes thus: ‘One way or another, Sørensen  achieves the same emotional state as with Schubert, but through another kind of time manipulation. It’s like a timeless space’ -  a hall of mirrors with countless concealed chambers, and an interplay of shadows and memories expressing the imaginative power of the composer.    

A spooky self-awareness

successen van de cyclussen Die schöne Müllerin en Die Winterreise in zijn achterhoofd publiceert hij de liederen in 1829 als de beroemde liederencyclus Schwanengesang D 957. Der Doppelgänger, waarvan we vanavond een instrumentale bewerking horen van het Danish String Quartet, is het voorlaatste lied When Schubert passed away on 19 November 1828 at the age of 31, he left behind fourteen songs based on verses by  the poets Ludwig Rellstab (1799–1860), Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) and Johann Gabriel Seidl (1804–1875). The composer himself had probably not thought of putting them together as a song cycle, however his publisher Tobias Haslinger saw commercial possibilities there. With the successes of the Die schöne Müllerin and Die Winterreise song cycles in mind, in 1829 he published them as the celebrated Schwanengesang D 957 song cycle. Der Doppelgänger, which we will hear this evening in an instrumental adaptation, is the penultimate song in the collection. The text is by Heinrich Heine, who published the untitled poem in three poetry collections (in 1824, 1827 and 1828). The song dates from three months before Schubert’s death. He based the title ‘Der Doppelgänger’ on the poem’s third and last couplet: Du Doppelgänger, du bleicher Geselle! Was äffst du nach mein Liebesleid, Das mich gequält auf dieser Stelle So manche Nacht, in alter Zeit? (‘You Doppelgänger, leave my past alone! Why your concern for my heartache, what have I not already suffered here?’) The poem concerns a man who discovers a ghostly figure deep in thought in the house where his beloved once lived. He recognises the figure as himself, overcome by the death of his beloved, full of pain and heartache. To give emphasis to the poem’s emotional tension, Schubert employs an exceptionally static accompaniment, inspired by the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. The accompaniment is actually a Baroque passacaglia (a genre used by Bach and his contemporaries as a variation on a fixed bass line) and in addition Schubert begins his song with the opening notes of the Fugue in C-sharp minor, BWV 849 from Bach’s The Well Tempered Clavier, Book 1. Over this steady, exceptionally tension-filled accompaniment, we hear the declamatory voice singing in short phrases. Der Doppelgänger is one of Schubert’s most intense compositions. The music emphasises the hopeless situation of the poem’s main character, a figure the composer, weakened by illness, undoubtedly regarded as his own emotional Doppelgänger. 

Danish String Quartet 

The origins of the Danish String Quartet go back to the childhoods of the three Danish members of the ensemble, violinists Frederik Øland and Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen and violist Asbjorn Nørgaard. They met at a music summer camp where they made music together. They continued to play together and, as teenagers, came under the guidance of the violinist and violist Tim Frederikson, professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. Before they knew it, they were active as a string quartet that, with the arrival of Norwegian cellist Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin in 2008, assumed its present form. The quartet quickly grew to become one of the most important chamber music voices in Danish musical life, receiving international recognition in 2013 as BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists. In 2020, the quartet was chosen as Musical America's Ensemble of the Year. The Danish String Quartet stands out for its creative programmes of  classical works alongside contemporary compositions. The ensemble is not afraid of excursions into folk music either. Their CD Woodworks consists of their own arrangements of Scandinavian folk music. The coming years will be devoted to the Doppelgänger-project, whereby the quartet will perform world premieres of works by Bent Sørensen (Denmark), Lotta Wennäkoski (Finland), Anna Thorvaldsdóttir (Iceland) and Thomas Adès (United Kingdom), combined with one of Schubert’s quartets or quintets, on which the new compositions are based. 

Maxim Shalygin

The work of the Dutch-Ukrainian composer Maxim Shalygin, born in 1985 in Kamjanske (Ukraine), includes vocal, symphonic, electro-acoustic and chamber music, as well as music for theatre, ballet and film. In his music, he looks to expand the traditional range of playing techniques by experimenting with the many possible sound combinations of different instruments. He combines all these techniques with a profound psychological and spiritual foundation. Shalygin has won numerous awards for his work and has been composer-in-residence at Izolyatsia [UA], Storioni Festival [NL] and Soundsofmusic Festival [NL]. He studied composition with Irina Ivashenko and later with Boris Tishchenko at the N. Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory in St. Petersburg [RU]. He continued his studies at the National Academy of Music in Kiev [UA] and at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague [NL], where he studied with Cornelis de Bondt and Diderik Wagenaar. He currently lives and works in the Netherlands.

Bent Sørensen

Bent Sørensen (°1958) is considered one of the most distinguished composers of our time. This status was confirmed in 2018 when he won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his work L'lsola della Città. Sørensen studied composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music with Ib Nørholm and at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus with Per Nørgård. He quickly found his own path, taking inspiration from both Danish folk song and the classical music tradition, without directly imitating either. Sørensen  has written numerous works in all genres, including a number of solo concertos such as the trombone concerto Birds and Bells and the viola concerto Sterbende Gärten that won the Nordic Council Music Prize in 1996. He has been teaching composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London since 2008.      

18:30

Flagey, Studio 1

Bent Sørensen will present a brand-new composition based on Schubert’s 15th String Quartet, well known for its symphonic nature. Come and find out why Schubert turned out to be such a good fit for these contemporary adventurers, during a 'sonic tasting' before the concert, moderated by Lalina Goddard. Conversation in English.