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New release collects Rued Langgaard's complete string quartets

Nightingale String Quartet

New release collects Rued Langgaard's complete string quartets

Next week, Rued Langgaard's complete string quartets are released as a box set, consisting of the three highly acclaimed recordings by the Danish Nightingale String Quartet.

New release
06 November 2019

With Dacapo's price winning album series consisting of Rued Langgaard's complete string quartets, the Danish Nightingale String Quartet have made an important contribution to putting the late romantic outsider Langgaard on the musical agenda, in Denmark as well as abroad.

Now a box set is released, presenting all eight string quartets, in the young Nightingale String Quartet's distinctly dramatic interpretation based on the revised Rued Langgaard Edition.

Heartrending youth works

Rued Langgaard's string quartets are passionate works from the composer's youth, representing both his nostalgically romantic side and his profoundly visionary modernity. The quartets are shot through with moving musical references to the fateful summer of 1913, when the composer met the (hopeless) love of his life, during a holiday in Blekinge, Sweden. 

The works cover a wide stylistic spectrum, and in the quartets we thus find Classicist, Romantic, Neoclassical, Expressiont and Modernist features in the tonal idiom of the excentric, young composer. 

Critically acclaimed recordings

The third album of the series rewarded the Nightingale String Quartet the prize Young Artist of the Year at the Gramophone Awards 2014. Before that, the first recording of the series was appointed Best Danish CD of the Year at the P2 Prisen 2013.

Søren Schauser of the Danish newspaper Berlingske wrote about the series: "They have created a set, that will stand as the ultimate one for many years", while Kristeligt Dagblad's Peter Dürrfeld praised the recordings with the words: "Langgaard has never sounded sharper"

In October this year, another one of Dacapo's Langgaard released received great acknowledgement, that is The Vienna Philharmonic's recording of Langgaard's Symphonies 2 and 6, which received the prestigious Gramophone Classical Music Awards in the category Orchestral Recording of the Year. 

  • Rued Langgaard

    The String Quartets

  • Rued Langgaard

    String Quartets Vol. 1

  • Rued Langgaard

    String Quartets Vol. 2

  • Rued Langgaard

    String Quartets Vol. 3

  • Rued Langgaard, Jacob Gade

    Symphonies 2 & 6