Danish String Quartet

Prodigies surface only infrequently within the string quartet realm, yet three of the four players who make up the Danish String Quartet first performed together during childhood and quickly drew notice both at home in Denmark and farther afield. The ensemble comprises Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, born in 1983 and playing violin; Frederik Øland, born in 1984 and also on violin; Asbjørn Nørgaard, born in 1984 on viola; and Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, born in 1982 on cello. All but Sjölin, who entered the group in 2008, first encountered one another at a summer music camp where they also played on the same soccer team. That early bond proved durable; while still teenagers they established a formal string quartet and enrolled at the Copenhagen Academy of Music, where Tim Frederiksen served as their principal instructor. They further attended master classes led by the Tokyo and Emerson String Quartets and additional distinguished musicians. Their first public appearance occurred in 2002 at the Copenhagen Summer Festival.

Following victories that included first prizes at the Danish Radio P2 Chamber Music Competition in 2004 and the Vagn Holmboe String Quartet Competition in 2005, the quartet signed with the Dacapo label and issued Carl Nielsen’s complete string quartets across two volumes. They later recorded for CAvi-music, producing a pair of Brahms discs. Designation as BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists in 2013 expanded their engagements throughout Europe and North America. In 2016 they transferred to ECM and recorded quartets by Adès, Nørgård & Abrahamsen. When they performed at the Chamber Music of Lincoln Center’s summer series in Saratoga during 2017, the still-youthful musicians had already amassed considerable experience. “If all goes well, around 2060 we will beat the world record for longest-running string quartet,” they wrote. “On that day we will host a giant feast -- you shall all be invited!” Their 2017 ECM release Last Leaf presented string-quartet versions of Scandinavian folk material. The following year they launched the first of five large-scale Prism programs, each pairing a late Beethoven quartet with a Bach fugue and an additional landmark quartet composition. Musical America named them Ensemble of the Year for 2020. The Prism cycle persisted through the pandemic years and reached its fourth installment in 2022 on an album that juxtaposed works by Mendelssohn and Bach with Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132.