Denmark Scandinavian Cello College – SCS Subsequent Era: Novo Quartet (Kaya Kato Møller, Nikolai Vasili Nedergaard [violins], Daniel Śledziński [viola], Signe Ebstrup Bitsch [cello]). Stevns Klint Expertise, Stevns Klint, 24.6.2023. (LV)

Mozart – Divertimento in D main, Ok.136
Haydn – String Quartet in C main, Op.20 No.2
Bartók – String Quartet No.4

The Novo Quartet was based in Copenhagen in 2018 by violinists Kaya Kato Møller and Nikolai Vasili Nedergaard and cellist Signe Ebstrup Bitsch, who had been quick pals since college years, and violist Daniel Śledziński from Poland. On Saturday night time at a UNESCO World Heritage website on the windswept Danish coast, the Quartet confirmed why they’re rising quick on the worldwide competitors circuit.

They launched Mozart’s Divertimento in D main with a candy, nuanced readability as Møller used a wide range of elegant bowing decisions to remodel the straightforward string symphony right into a miniature concerto, integrating most of her portamento into splendidly spun-out lyrical strains. The pizzicato dialogue between the viola and cello main again to the recapitulation was mesmerizing in its jewel-like purity. Within the Andante, the sound of the violins towards Bitsch’s mild blonde cello sound steered the sensuous waves of Così fan tutte to come back. The Quartet took the Presto only a heartbeat too quick – the right tempo, in different phrases – and captured Mozart’s delicious vitality and need to please. Nedergaard was very good in his sixteenth notes earlier than Møller took them house, charging on the finish.

Simply as Haydn’s Op.20 Quartets have been starting to discover the outer frontiers of the style, together with the addition of distinguished solo roles for the cello, the Novo have been exploring all kinds of fascinating musical narratives for Op.20 No.2 in C main. Bitsch gracefully laid out her opening solo with quicksilver fluid triplets, setting the tone for a efficiency infused with youthful vitality and occasional hints of gossamer magnificence. Møller once more used a wide range of bowings and flashing moments of virtuosity to create momentum and led her colleagues on a merry chase in Haydn’s quaint chirping dialogues – and all this earlier than the primary motion’s double bar. After the cello rose like Venus on the half shell out of the unison recitative in C minor that opens the second motion, the Quartet let the wonders of Haydn’s creativeness take over. The sudden daylight within the central part was breathtaking in its simplicity, and Møller performed her brief cadenza as if it have been being improvised. Their segue into the Minuetto was disarmingly informal, and the fugal finale was refreshingly lighthearted.

At intermission one of many members of the viewers smiled at me and mentioned, ‘They have been prime’. It turned out that the Quartet’s Bartók can be much more prime. They tore into the opening Allegro with ferocious vitality; cast the episodic, epigrammatic nature of the music into one thing resembling circulate; and inspired the music to get into stride. Their incisive and figuring out Prestissimo buzzed with scrumptious vitality, their insane glissandi have been intoxicating. Within the Allegretto pizzicato they performed a Haydnesque joke on the viewers, fooling them into pondering the motion was over with a just-too-long pause earlier than enjoying the ultimate few bars. By the top of the finale, they have been inhabiting Bartók’s world as naturally as that they had these of Mozart and Haydn – they usually had taken the viewers with them.

Known as again for an encore, the Quartet performed the standard midsummer hymn for the Feast of St. John, ‘Vi elsker vort land’ (‘We love our land’), by Peter Erasmus Lange-Müller, and a few within the viewers sang softly alongside.

Laurence Vittes