From the North, with Joy — Scandinavian Folk Tunes and Christmas Classics

Emera Kandybin, Violin

Sasha Kandybin, Violin

MaryGrace Bender, Cello

Silvana Matthews, Viola

Last Leaf by The Danish String Quartet

Born in Denmark and now in their mid-thirties, Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen (violin), Asbjørn Nørgaard (viola), and Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin (cello) originally met at a country summer camp for amateur musicians when they were still in their teens. Performing together since the early 2000s, the musicians have been rehearsing and refining a chamber music repertoire under the tutelage of Tim Frederiksen, the renowned viola teacher and head of Chamber Music at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. The ensemble was then joined in 2008 by violin player Frederik Øland from Norway and started recording professionally, and are known together as the Danish String Quartet.

In their early albums, the ensemble explored the string quartet repertoire of Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Haydn, Johannes Brahms or Robert Fuchs and also focused their attention on Danish composers such as Carl Nielsen (1865 – 1931), Per Nørgård (b. 1932) or Hans Abrahamsen (b. 1952). But what really sets the quartet apart from similar ensembles is their recent endeavor to arrange Scandinavian folk music for a classical string quartet. Initiated with the remarkable Wood Works in 2014, the Danish String Quartet resumed their exploration of the Nordic traditional repertoire with Last Leaf released on ECM Records in September of 2017.
The repertoire recorded on the album ranges from a traditional Faroese medieval ballad (“Stædelil”) to Swedish polskas – either newly composed or from 19th-century collections – or Norwegian waltzes. There are also Danish traditional tunes, minuets or “Sønderhonings” (“Æ Rømeser”), a unique traditional 18th-century dance tune that is only found on the tiny island of Rømo, off the western coast of Denmark.

For geographical reasons, the southern part of Norway and the western coast of Denmark have a lot more in common with Scotland and Northern England than with continental Europe. For instance, the quartet performs and includes on the album the magnificent “Unst Boat Song”, originally sung in the old Norse language which was spoken in overseas settlements such as on Unst, the northernmost inhabited island of the Shetland Islands. “The Dromer” is an English dance found in an 18th-century Danish tune collection and is also known as a Scottish reel.
The electric “Shine you no more” is a newly composed reel by violinist Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen which was partly inspired “by a harmonic progression in John Dowland’s “Flow my Tears””. The piece was first written in the early 17th century as part of “Lachrimæ or Seaven Teares”, a suite of instrumental pavans while the English Renaissance composer was in exile and working as a lutenist at the court of King Christian IV of Denmark. The theme was then reworked with new lyrics and “Shine you no more” is a quote from the song.
With the musicians focusing on a repertoire they enjoy playing, a palpable sense of energy and excitement immediately transpires from every piece on the record. Additionally, most of these tunes are originally written for one or two voices and not for a quartet. Not constrained by composers’ instructions, the quartet is then free to interpret and arrange the music for four voices as they sense it, playing around with pulse, intonation, dynamics, and rhythm.
In doing so, the Last Leaf album not only shines a fantastic new light on existing scores, but revisiting an older folk repertoire also naturally prompts the four musicians to compose new music in the process.