Chamber Music Sedona will celebrate its Danish connection Monday, January 27 when it presents the Great Dane – Victor Borge in the documentary “100 Years of Music and Laughter” 7pm at the Mary D. Fisher Theater and then welcomes the Danish String Quartet as it makes its Sedona debut Sunday February 2 for a 2:30pm concert at St. John Vianney Church, 180 St. John Vianney Lane, Sedona 86336. The Concert is made possible with support from Marilyn Thaden Dexter and Linda & Aiden Ferry.
Recently named to Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s prestigious CMS Two program, the Danish String Quartet – formerly known as the Young Danish String Quartet, made its debut in the Copenhagen Summer Festival in 2002. In the course of a remarkably short time, the quartet drew attention to itself for its highly committed musicianship and enthralling style, and the ensemble quickly became the most promising news in the classical music world in Denmark.
The Quartet’s program includes Ten Preludes (1952) by Hans Abrahamsen, Quartet in A Minor, Op. 13 by
Felix Mendelssohn and Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132 by Ludwig van Beethoven.
The Quartet members add, “As a string quartet, we find ourselves at the core of the classical music world. On a daily basis we delve deeply into works by great masters such as Beethoven and Mozart, but we also play the occasional folk gig. Over the years we have been fortunate to study in many different places in master classes with renowned teachers and have had opportunities to perform in major concert halls across the world. Sometimes a friendly reviewer has written nice things about us too. We have participated in competitions and made some recordings as well. If you want to know more about all this stuff, check out the ‘press‘ page on our site, where you can download a PDF with all the text you could hope for.
Here’s a simpler story of the quartet: We are three Danes and one Norwegian cellist, making this a truly Scandinavian endeavor. We are often joking about ourselves being modern Vikings – perhaps a touch more harmless than our ancestors – we are not pillaging cities or razing the English coastline! We are simply your friendly neighborhood string quartet with above average amounts of beard. The three of us met very early in our lives in the Danish countryside at an amazing summer camp for enthusiastic amateur musicians. Not yet teenagers, we were the youngest players, so we hung out all the time playing football and chamber music together. During the regular school year we would get together often to play music and just have fun. We became best friends. In 2001, professor Tim Frederiksen of The Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen got in touch with us and started coaching us on a regular basis. All of the sudden, at the ages of 15 and 16, we were a serious string quartet. It all happened so fast that none of us seemed to notice the transition.”
Tickets are $40 reserved and $20 general admission and may be purchased on line at http://chambermusicsedona.org/concertsDetail.php?10-26 or by phone at 928.204.2415.
Chamber Music Sedona’s 31st Season is made possible with support from The City of Sedona, The Arizona Commission on the Arts with funding from the State of Arizona and the National Endowment for the Arts, The Sedona Community Foundation, The Verde Valley Medical Center, Aspey Watkins & Diesel PLLC., and WESTAF.