Rising Stars Princely String Quartets – Dahlkvist Quartet
Festival Theatre Karol Szymanowski: String Quartet No. 2, op. 56 Beethoven: String Quartet in E-flat major, op. 127 Each year under its Rising Stars programme, the European Concert Hall Organisation selects a group of young musicians to represent the generation of future stars. In the 2012/13 season, Sweden’s Dahlkvist Quartet will tour illustrious venues on the Old Continent, from Barcelona’s L’Auditori to Budapest’s Palace of Arts to Baden-Baden’s Festspielhaus. It is not quite so simple, of course. As is well known – or at least as the experts say – a good string quartet cannot be young: it takes years or even decades of playing together to reach the required standard. In recent years, however, several exceptions to this rule have emerged both in Hungary and abroad. The Dahlkvist Quartet is one such group: formed in 2007, the ensemble has very swiftly risen to become the leading young string quartet in Sweden. It takes its name from the three Dahlkvist siblings who form three-quarters of the quartet, together with a Warsaw-born young violinist as the fourth member. All were students of the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Given the huge number of string quartets around the world, the Dahlkvist Quartet needed to find an area in which they could demonstrate something original and unique. They managed to hit upon a profile wherein they regularly combine classics of the string quartet repertoire with modern works, with a focus on Polish and Swedish composers. The group’s motto – “the more you learn, the less you know” – reveals their need to endlessly search for self-improvement. Working in this spirit, they have fulfilled a long series of concert invitations.