The programme performed by the outstanding Danish NOVO Quartet features three works, two of which are linked in a fascinating way. Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in F major, Op. 77 No. 2, belongs to the composer’s final set of string quartets and is a testament to his late style: characterised by formal clarity yet full of at times strikingly unconventional ideas. Particularly noteworthy is the minuet, with its highly unusual tonal design.
It was this very movement that inspired Entr'acte (2011) by the American composer Caroline Shaw. As the composer herself writes: ‘Entr'acte was written after hearing Haydn’s Op. 77 No. 2, with its hushed, soul-searching transition in the minuet [from F major] to the trio in D flat major. It is structured like a classical form but takes it a little further. I love the way some pieces suddenly take you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, Technicolor transition’. One of the most distinctive and versatile figures in contemporary American music, Shaw was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2013, at the age of thirty, for her Partita for 8 Voices, becoming one of the youngest recipients of the award.
The concert concludes with Carl Nielsen’s String Quartet No. 3 in E flat major, Op. 14. The greatest Danish composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Nielsen is best known for his six symphonies and a substantial body of chamber music. Dating from the early years of his career, the quartet already displays the hallmarks of his style: rhythmic vitality, bold contrasts and a fondness for contrapuntal writing.
Piotr Maculewicz