Beethoven closed his string quartet output with a riddle. The final movement of Op. 135 carries his inscription “Muss es sein? Es muss sein!” (“Must it be? It must be!”), a line that scholars have not settled in two centuries. The Danish String Quartet, who in 2025 became the first ensemble ever to receive the Léonie Sonning Music Prize, joining past honorees Igor Stravinsky, Miles Davis, and Yo-Yo Ma, brings that particular unresolved question to Maverick Concert Hall on Saturday, August 1.
About the Show
The program pairs two works that share more than they appear to. Stravinsky’s Suite italienne, drawn from his Pulcinella ballet, wraps an 18th-century elegance inside the composer’s own 20th-century wit; Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135, the last complete quartet he wrote and one of the most concentrated pieces of music he ever made, follows it. The evening closes with Nordic folk-song arrangements by the quartet itself, the same tradition that drove Keel Road, their 2024 ECM album named one of the New York Times’ best classical albums of the year.
Comprising Frederik Øland and Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen on violins, Asbjørn Nørgaard on viola, and Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin on cello, the Danish String Quartet formed in 2004 at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen and has built a reputation — in the words of the Boston Classical Review — as one of “simply two kinds of string quartets: the Danish, and the others.” Their integration of Nordic folk into their classical practice is not a novelty act; it is central to their identity, as essential to what they do as any sonata.
Venue & Logistics
Maverick Concert Hall sits on Maverick Road in Woodstock, in the Hudson Valley. Founded in 1916, the Maverick Chamber Music Festival is the oldest ongoing summer chamber music festival in the United States; the hall itself is a hand-built wooden structure with wide plank walls and heavy timber framing that creates an acoustic warmth particularly suited to chamber music. At 400 seats, it is an intimate room for an ensemble of this profile; the Danish Quartet’s dynamic range, from barely audible pianissimo to full-ensemble urgency, carries differently here than it does in a large modern hall. The concert begins at 6:00 p.m.
Tickets
Reserved hall seats are priced at $75 or $40, with partial-obstruction seats at $30 or $27. General admission on the outdoor grounds is $25; student tickets are $10. Buy tickets