The day after a sold-out performance at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Danish String Quartet will headline the opening of the spring series of Bridgehampton Chamber Music. A number of the top quartets in the world have graced the Bridgehampton stage in the past, but Boston Classical Review has raved, “There are simply two kinds of string quartets: the Danish, and the others.”
The concert on Saturday takes place at 5 p.m. at the festival’s main venue, the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, as do the next two programs. The quartet is on a weeklong tour of five concerts in the U.S., followed by Germany, Italy, and Greece, and then will go back to Denmark for six more concerts in two weeks.
“They are very grounded as people,” Marya Martin, the festival’s founder and artistic director, said by phone last week. “The way they play seems so wondrous and so natural, and the ease of their playing is just spectacular.”
To complement their serious dedication to outstanding artistry, the quartet’s description of themselves has a delightful touch of humor: “We are three Danes and one Norwegian cellist, making this a truly Scandinavian endeavor. Being relatively bearded, we are often compared to the Vikings. However, we are only pillaging the English coastline occasionally.”
Two large-scale works will fill the program: Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 4 in D and Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15 in G.
The story of the Shostakovich quartet, composed in 1949, is involved with the times in which it was written. But briefly, Ms. Martin said, “It was written just as Stalin was coming down hard on Shostakovich. He had lost his teaching job, all of his paid income, and his music was banned,” as stated in official governmental jargon, for “formalistic distortions and anti-democratic tendencies.” Shostakovich thought it would be safe to turn to folk music as a source of inspiration, but in this quartet he turned to Jewish folk music, just as Stalin’s latent antisemitism was surfacing.
“His friends said, you cannot release this,” Ms. Martin said. So it wasn’t performed until 1953, nine months after Stalin died.
Schubert’s Quartet No. 15 is the last one that he wrote, near the end of his life. In it, he focused on lyricism more than he had before, and went further in exploring major and minor modes.
April 26 brings a program called “Spring Clarity.” Assembled by James Austin Smith, it features him on oboe, Ms. Martin on flute, Chad Hoopes on violin, Saeunn Thorsteinsdottir, appearing with the series for the first time, on cello, and Shai Wosner on piano.
The theme is inspired by William Grant Still’s “Summerland” for flute and piano, “appropriate for this time of year, because we all yearn for summer already,” Mr. Wosner said last week. While the four pieces on the program offer various combinations of two or three instruments, they all have a significant and integral piano part.
There is an Oboe Sonata by Grazyna Bacewicz, a Polish composer of the 20th century, and a piece by Eugene Goossens, an English composer, conductor, and oboist, with the unusual title of “Pastorale et Arlequinade.” It refers to a harlequin or clownlike character, and “there is a joke element to it, or a tongue-in-cheek element,” Mr. Wosner said.
After these selections, which may be less well known, the major work from the classical cannon is Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor.
“Some parts of it are very symphonic,” Mr. Wosner said, referring to the characteristics of this trio that have made it so enduring. “For example, the end of the last movement could easily be at home in a symphony, in terms of the textures that he uses. You can hear drumrolls in the piano part, and you can hear the brass in the chords and strings. These could have been part of any orchestral work.”
“At the same time, if you look at the slow movement, we have the intimacy that you have in some of the greatest chamber music. And also quite fascinating is the interweaving of the lines between the violin and the cello. It’s very contrapuntal, and very conversational.”
In addition to appearing with Bridgehampton Chamber Music, Mr. Wosner said, “At the moment I’m on tour with two very good friends, playing a few transcriptions that I’ve made of various pieces, for clarinet, viola, and piano, including an original piece that I’ve put together for us,” which has been played once in Europe, but this week they are playing it in Canada and the U.S.
The series concludes on May 17 with Michael Stephen Brown on piano, Paul Huang on violin, Ettore Causa on viola, Clive Greensmith on cello, and Ms. Martin on flute.
Gustav Mahler’s only piece for a chamber ensemble, his Piano Quartet in A minor, will be played. It was written when he was just 16 years old. Actually it is only one movement; perhaps he didn’t continue with it because he wasn’t quite mature enough to know how to handle the medium. It was performed in 1876, Ms. Martin said, “then he abandoned it. It was lost for many years, and when his wife, Alma Mahler, died, they found this manuscript in her papers.” Fifty-three years after his death, it was performed in New York, in 1964, and has been performed often since then.
A composer to be heard for the first time in the series is Belinda Reynolds, whose “Cover” for flute, cello, and piano was written in 1996. Mr. Martin described it as “more of a sound piece, a piece of motion and soundscape,” with beautiful, atmospheric moments at the beginning, and then some rhythmic writing.
Finally, Johannes Brahms’s pinnacle Piano Quartet in G minor will close the series, culminating in the driving and energetic “Rondo alla Zingarese,” often known as the “Gypsy Rondo.”
Tickets are $50 or $75, $10 for students, with a subscription available, at bcmf.org or 212-741-9403.
