Nielsen: Complete String Quartets

Compared with Nielsen’s symphonies, whose greatness nobody disputes, his quartets tended to be undersold as charming early pieces written (mostly in the 1880s and ’90s) at a time before he found his voice. But then along came this recording by the Danish String Quartet, and things changed. Youthful and revisionist, the DSQ brings probing vigour to the music that reveals it in a new light—imaginative, fresh, more truly Nielsen-like than anyone had thought even while it pays the odd debt to past composers. There are four numbered quartets in the output, each with something strikingly affirmative to say. The E-Flat Major and F Minor have profoundly beautiful slow movements. And they’re not only beautifully performed, but also come (alongside Nielsen’s String Quintet, with the ensemble joined by its former college mentor, violist Tim Frederiksen) in superb recorded sound, too.