Adès, Nørgård & Abrahamsen

The acclaimed quartet takes up three haunting, intense works, compelling examples of the diversity of string quartet music in the past century. Adès’ Arcadiana is a moody, pensive investigation, featuring pointillistic melodies and ghostly glissandos. Nørgård’s String Quartet No. 1 is full of shadowy dissonance and cautious trills, relying on the alternation of longer melodic phrases and short, pizzicato (plucked string) motifs. On this ambitious record—their first with ECM—the Danish String Quartet reveal themselves as a major force in the performance of elusive, modern European works.