Nielsen: String Quartets, Vol. 2

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Anthony Tommasini wrote in the New York Times: "Last year the Young Danish String Quartet, founded in 2001 by four students in Copenhagen, released the first volume of a survey of the four published string quartets and the string quintet by Carl Nielsen. … Volume 2 has just been issued, and the impassioned, insightful performances again shed light on fascinating repertory. Nielsen, who died in 1931 at 66, is usually associated with early-20th-century nationalist composers. Yet, a self-described free spirit, he set himself apart from his safely folkloric compatriots. … Most of the F minor Quartet (1890) was written by the 25-year-old Nielsen during his first trip outside Denmark, to Germany and elsewhere. … Nielsen took the quartet home, where it caught on with performers and critics. Some of those same critics were perplexed by Nielsen's next quartet, in E flat, written and revised in the late 1890s, complaining that its 'convoluted' contrapuntal writing would be appreciated only by connoisseurs. Here the music comes across as daring, with its jagged rhythms and obsessive repetitions" (8/10/08).