KGNU’s Sanford Baran interviews Rune Tonsgaard Sorenson, a violinist from the Danish String Quartet, known for their mix of classical and folk music. Sorenson shares his musical journey and his early love for the violin. He discusses the quartet’s formation in 1998 and highlights their diverse repertoire, which includes both classical and folk music, and their creative process for arranging and performing these pieces. He also mentions their upcoming album “Keel Road,” which explores musical traditions from Scandinavia and the British Isles, and future projects like a recording of Schubert’s chamber music and a multi-art form project for Shostakovich’s 50th anniversary. The quartet will perform at the Colorado Music Festival on July 30th.
Sanford Baran: Today we are delighted to welcome Rune Tonsgaard Sorenson, a remarkable violinist and member of the renowned Danish String Quartet. Known for their versatile repertoire and captivating performances, the Danish String Quartet’s unique blend of classical and folk influences has enchanted audiences worldwide. The Danish will be performing at the Colorado Music Festival on Tuesday, July the 30th. Rune, thank you so much for being with us. A real pleasure.
Rune Tonsgaard Sorenson: Thanks for having me.
Sanford Baran: Can you tell us about your journey in music? How did you start playing the violin, and how did you come to be part of the Danish String Quartet?
Rune Tonsgaard Sorenson: Yeah, I grew up in a house with a lot of music, and a lot of singing. My parents are musical, but they are not musicians. My father is from the Faroe Islands. He came to Denmark in his early 20s and started teaching the traditional dance from the Faroe Islands, which is this medieval chain dance. He met my mother, and I grew up in the folk music revival, you can say, in the town of Roskilde, which is quite close to Copenhagen, back in the 80s. They would take me to these dance evenings and folk music festivals, and we even had a little kids band performing on the streets of Roskilde, I remember. I got my first instrument when I was three years old. That was actually not a violin, but it was a tiny little kids accordion.
Then the year after, I got a violin and that just spoke to me more, so that became my preferred instrument. I’ve always loved playing with other people, I’ve always loved playing folk music, but I also started classical music with the Suzuki method. Those two genres or worlds have then been living side by side in my life ever since then.
I met the boys from the quartet when I was in my early teens, I think. That was back in 1998 when I went to this music camp in the Danish countryside for amateur musicians. And they were there, Asbjørn and Fredrik, the other violinist and the viola player of the quartet. And also our first cellist, Carl-Oskar Østerlind. We felt a great chemistry personally and musically and were just hanging out in the summer camp playing football, soccer, and playing tons of chamber music. We would go to the library and just pick up a bunch of pieces. And then we would go to a room and just sight read what we could. Not everything sounded so good, but we had a lot of fun doing it and that’s what started the whole thing with the quartet. It’s still something that we enjoy playing together now, after more than 25 years, actually. I think that’s because we are still very good friends and we have a great time together traveling around and playing music that we love. That’s the short story of me and the string quartet.
Sanford Baran: I understand that it can be quite intense at times being in an ensemble like a quartet. I would imagine that these close friendships that have been built over the years between the four of you come in handy.
Rune Tonsgaard Sorenson: Oh yeah it very much helps, of course, when four people are playing together. There will be times where you disagree on things. It can be musically, it can be career wise, or something else, but I think what we’ve always been good at in our quartet is going to a bar, having a beer, talking about things. Not only music, but just everything, we share everything together. We know each other so well now that every time someone might have a bad day or is in a bad mood then the three other guys feel it instantly. And we know how to tackle that. I should say, it really is a sort of a family or a marriage, because we spend so much time on the road together. It’s really a blessing knowing each other so well in many ways. That’s why we really still enjoy it and know how to get out of bad situations. Not that there are many of those, but of course it happens once in a while.
Sanford Baran: Your repertoire is known for its diversity, ranging from classical to folk music. How do you choose the pieces you play and what draws you to such a wide range of styles?
Rune Tonsgaard Sorenson: We have always lived by the mantra that we should only play music that we really love and that we really connect with and that speaks to us. That’s rule number one. And because as a string quartet, you have so much repertoire to choose between. Haydn, for instance, wrote over 70 string quartets. It’s definitely not all of them that we find interesting. Many of them we find quite boring. So we try to pick and choose the pieces that really speak to us and where we feel that we can contribute with our personal take on the music and not just play completely mainstream.
In terms of the many types of music that we play, I guess nowadays it’s so easy to have access to all kinds of music. We just click a button on our computer or our phones, and then we can listen to all the music in the world. I think we have always been quite curious musicians and we listen to all kinds of music. We feel that we can learn a lot from other types of music, other genres, other art forms. And we try to apply that to our repertoire planning. Also when we do our own festival, we try to shake up things quite a bit because it’s stimulating for us, this creativity.
I think we’ve become better at it with the years. We’ve also introduced folk music to the quartet – traditional music and new Nordic music. That was actually many years ago now. We started in our early years, incorporating simple arrangements into our classical concerts. That went on for some years until we had enough material to record an album with this music, which is 10 years ago now that our first folk music album came out. The album is called Woodworks. That has become something very important to us because it’s music that we love. The melodies are just so hauntingly beautiful, many of them, but it also is a window into our cultural heritage, our countries, our region, our little place in the world, Scandinavia.
When you play your own arrangements or your own music, you can really put some personality into it in a way that’s maybe a little bit different when you play Beethoven, because all string quartets in the world play Beethoven and it’s hard to find a way through that music that hasn’t been done before. But by playing the music from our home in our own arrangements, that’s maybe a little bit easier to us. The reactions that we get when we play this type of music is very heartwarming. I think it sounds like something that many people haven’t heard before, but it awakens something within them which is really interesting. It’s music that we love to play. And that’s really the case with all the repertoire we have been playing from the very beginning.
Sanford Baran: When I think of folk music, I think of mainly playing the chords of a song on an instrument, like a guitar, and the rest is pretty much impromptu. As a quartet, do you write out all the parts in advance? Or is the playing more improvised?
Rune Tonsgaard Sorenson: What we’ve been doing is nothing new. Tons of classical composers have worked with their local traditions – Clausen, Bartók you name it. A lot of American composers as well. So this is nothing new. I think our arrangements are somewhere in between classical and folk music because it is written out. Normally the way we work is that either Frederik, our cellist, or I will bring a more or less finished arrangement to the table. And then the four of us rehearse, play through, and then we fine tune and adjust together. We’ve experienced that this is the best, most effective, most easy way of doing it. Only one mind has the overall idea of the shape of the music, because as you say, you play the guitar, but we don’t have any chord instruments, so it’s a little bit hard for a string quartet to improvise good voicings and agree on things. And then at least for us, it has been easier if one mind has made the initial ideas and then we work on it together, obviously. The music changes, it evolves through many concerts and performances. That’s also a very nice thing about making your own arrangements – you’re not bound to anything. We can change it on the go. We can take out a beat part or add an outro or whatever we want. So that’s a liberating feeling.
Sanford Baran: To what extent is it acceptable to take some liberties when performing, for example, Beethoven? Is that allowed or simply not in good taste?
Rune Tonsgaard Sorenson: It’s totally allowed, I would say, and I wish sometimes we were more courageous ourselves when playing the standard repertoire. But, it’s also something that, again, has evolved over time. I think we are definitely more free now than we were in the beginning. To me, there has been a tendency to put people like Beethoven or Haydn on this pedestal, and make them gods almost. By all means, they wrote fantastic music and we love playing much of this music. But, I think you should really not limit yourself in your performances as an artist. And I think we have more to say than we think sometimes and more freedom in the music. I love listening to people who dare to take some chances, make some really bold interpretations of the classical repertoire. Take a guy like Pekka Kuusisto, the Finnish violinist. Oh my God, what an incredible imagination and range of colors. He does things his own way. It’s so original and you can always hear it’s him playing. I really love that. He’s such an inspiring musician to me. I actually wish that there would be more freedom when we perform classical music in general.
Sanford Baran: I understand that the quartet is releasing a new album entitled Keel Road due out on August 30th. What is the meaning of the title Keel Road and what is this album about?
Rune Tonsgaard Sorenson: Keel Road is more of a metaphor, but of course it’s connected to the ocean and the sea. Until now we have played music from our own home, from Scandinavia. But on this album we’ve been looking a little bit West to the British Isles, to Ireland and England and their really amazing traditions over there. There are many reasons for that. Often when we play our own tune from Scandinavia, people react by saying it sounds like Irish music and yes, that’s completely true. But that’s also probably because that’s the reference to the majority of the listeners. They know Irish music, which is world famous. Irish culture and Irish music. And indeed there are many similarities. Back in the days, it would probably be much faster to go with your boat to the British Isles than going, say, to Southern Germany on a horseback. So the oceans were the sort of musical highways of the past, where people were exchanging goods, but also culture, stories, music dances. And that has been the focus of this album. We imagine that there’s this place somewhere in the North Sea where all these stories meet. We’ve tried to explore that place by including music not only from Norway, Denmark, but also from the Faroe Islands, from Ireland and from England. We even have a tune that is most likely from the Flemish area in Belgium. That’s sort of the narrative of the album. It’s been almost two years in the making, so we’re just so happy that it’s finally coming out now. For the past couple of years, we’ve been working with a project called Doppelgänger where we paired the four late chamber music pieces by Schubert, three quartets and the C major quintet, with contemporary pieces, like commissioned pieces. I think we are going to record that hopefully later this year. So that’s going to be the next big recording project coming up. And then next year will mark 50 years since Shostakovich died. So that’s going to be a big Shostakovich year. We have some really interesting plans for that. I don’t think I can expose too many details here now, but it’s going to be a really cool multi-art form project that we will spend a lot of time on and that includes many of his string quartets and it’s going to be based on some of his letters. So that’s the big thing for next year. And then we have other ideas, but let’s see what the future brings.
Sanford Baran: Rune, it’s been a real pleasure speaking with you. Kudos to the Danish String Quartet for infusing your performances with a real spirit of innovation and freedom. And we very much look forward to the Danish’s concert here at the Colorado Music Festival on July 30th. Thanks so much.
Rune Tonsgaard Sorenson: Thank you so much for having me.
