Three Danes and a Norwegian will take the stage at Santa Fe’s Lensic Performing Arts Center.
They aren’t Vikings. The musicians will dive into works by Joseph Haydn, Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten, plus a dollop of Nordic folk music on Sunday, Jan. 22.
Frederik Oland (violin), Rune Tonsgaard Sorenson (violin), Asbjorn Norgaard (viola) and Fredrik Schoyen Sjölin (cello) will play Haydn’s Quartet in G Minor, Op. 20, No. 3; Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 7 in F Sharp Minor, Op. 108, Three Divertimenti by Britten and Nordic folk music.
The three original members met in a summer camp in the Danish countryside for amateur music enthusiasts. Not yet teenagers, they were the youngest players, so they played football and chamber music together.
In 2001, professor Tim Frederiksen of the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen got in touch with the group and started coaching them on a regular basis, drilling them for hours in early Haydn quartets.
All of the sudden, at the ages of 15 and 16, they were a serious string quartet, practicing intonation and the finer points of the violin.
In 2008, Norwegian cellist Schoyen Sjölin joined the group, resembling a character from “Game of Thrones.” During his free time, he can be found fixing or sailing his sailboat somewhere in Scandinavia.
Other interests of the group include vintage cars, cooking, gaming, reading, playing, talking, scuba diving, playing tennis, and being dads of babies and toddlers.
Over the years, they have studied in many different places, including master classes with renowned teachers and have had opportunities to perform in major concert halls across the world.
