Anders Koppel
String Quartet No. 4
1. Lento Assai
2. Largo
3. Agitato
4. Largo
Concerto for Mandolin and String Quartet
5. I. Tempo di choro. Allegro ma non troppo
6. II. Larghetto
7. III. Allegro con brio
Terzetto
8. I. Adagio
9. II. Andante grazioso
10. III. Allegro con brio
Anders Koppel ©
By Jens Cornelius
Since the 1960s the Danish composer and musician Anders Koppel, born in 1947, has being developing his musical creativity in every conceivable way, ranging from jazz, rock, Balkan music to chamber works, ballet music, film music and more than 40 solo concertos for every conceivable instrument. He was born into a musical family as a son of the pianist and composer Herman D. Koppel (1908-1998), one of the leading figures in Danish music in the 20th century. All Herman D. Koppel’s four children became prominent musicians, and in the two following generations great new talents have still been emerging from the artistic Koppel family.
Anders Koppel has with considerable energy preserved the luxuriance which was in the air, when in the 1960s he began to unfurl his life as a musician. Since the 1990s he has worked not least on compositions in classical forms, but without giving up his many concerts improvising music of all kinds played on his particularly favourite instrument, a Hammond B3 organ. Koppel’s imagination and fecundity of ideas give his music a character of joie de vivre, curiosity and playfulness. Combined with his profound experience with written-down music it gives a wonderful sparkle to his works in classical forms which are unmistakably founded on the improviser’s sharp ears for fertile ideas and the ability to create gripping music. Talk of crossover music and mixed genres does not make sense in Anders Koppel’s works, since whatever the genre is, his music is characterized by the same fluent musicality and by an artistic integrity making discussion irrelevant. The music sounds first and foremost like himself. “It is one of the advantages of not being an academically educated musician”, says Anders Koppel. “I do not think in genres. Style is a musical fingerprint and not a mixture which I consciously construct.”
String quartet no. 4
So far Anders Koppel has composed five string quartets, the most recent one in 2021. “I love writing string quartets. It is an ensemble which has a natural balance and is wonderfully appealing to work with. All five quartets play a large part in my production, since when you write a string quartet, you wear your best clothes.”
Anders Koppel’s String Quartet no. 4 from 2016 is a big work which progresses in shifting episodes without being divided up into movements. Koppel himself draws attention to how the work is an investigation of the ways one can establish rhythms in relation to each other, and it becomes really groovy at times, while at the same time it is complex and rather serious music. The seriousness causes strong tension in the contrasts among the four string parts.
The central element is a compelling and slightly mystical sequence of chords which introduces the whole work. The chords are doors which are opened while at the same time they express a search for one’s bearings and finding new ways. The sequence of chords returns several times in the work like a partition in longer or shorter formations. After the long first episode in the work the sequence of chords actually creates a long and meditative pause for thought, where it expands to a passage which reminds one of a chaconne, a solemn, slow building-up over a repeated harmonic progression.
String Quartet no. 4 reaches an extremely dynamic climax about two thirds of the way through the movement where the assembly of musicians unite in confident vitality. But this is not the finale, since the climax leads to a pensive return, and Anders Koppel concludes with an “Abgesang”, a rounding-off coda which he entrusts to the first violin. It is a beautiful, melancholy farewell, until we finally hear the series of chords for the last time, this time in gradually slower tempo before the definitive release in D major. The journey towards the conclusion has been stormy, and the challenges hard-won. We have come home where we began, but we have been changed by experiences on the way.
RELEASE DATE: October 2022
CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 946
EAN: 5709499946008
