The recent emergence of the Denmark- and Norway-based Danish String Quartet has brought a fresh voice to the world of chamber music. Having played together since the age of fifteen, they tackle a remarkable variety of repertoire — Brahms, Nielsen, Scandinavian folk tunes, jazz standards — with equal thoughtfulness and rigor. The Danish String Quartet recently performed on NPR’s popular Tiny Desk Concerts series, where they were lauded for their “warmth, wit, beautiful tone, and technical prowess.”

In Durham, these four exceptional and energetic players dive into an all-Beethoven program, starting with the composer’s mastery of the form in op. 18 and culminating in the complexity and emotional depth of two of his colossal late quartets, op. 135 and op. 131. The latter is routinely considered Beethoven’s most strikingly innovative achievement, with its nearly improvisatory wanderings between permutations of its central themes. Stravinsky once called it “perfect, inevitable, inalterable.”