The Delightful Danes
Danish String Quartet, presented by Cal Performances, Berkeley, February 17, 2019.
IT’S OFTEN hard in a concert to separate your reaction to the performers from your response to the music they’re playing. This is not necessarily a bad thing—a certain amount of synaesthesia is one of the virtues of seeing and hearing music played live—but it can be confusing at times.
The Danish String Quartet suffers from, or possibly benefits from, but at any rate is burdened by the fact that virtually all first-time audience members find these guys adorable. That is the word I repeatedly hear from other people at their concerts, and I’ve even used it myself. It’s not just that the four blonde or blondish-brown mopheads conjure up subliminal associations with the early Beatles. And it’s not just that as a group they seem to be having such a good time, whether they are regaling us with quartet classics or introducing us to a new piece. It has something to do with the sense of intimacy they create, not just among the four players themselves, but also between them and us. In practicing their special kind of charisma, they manage to provoke in us the warmest kinds of feelings—for themselves, for the composers they represent, and for the
