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Times Of Unrest

In 2018, Aksel Nielsen, cellist and chairman of the Chamber music society BRAGE in Randers, started a dialogue with composer Hanne Tofte Jespersen about a new string quartet. He wished to commission her to write a quartet for BRAGE. They both liked the idea of the new work to be composed for a historical theme which would also be relevant for a present audience, incl. youth.

They soon agreed on a context of a late Haydn quartet from the 1790s and Benjamin Britten's 1. string quartet from 1941. BRAGE invited Nordic String Quartet to take up the task and involved four other chamber music societies in the project. Neither Aksel nor Hanne had imagined how relevant it would prove to call the project TIMES OF UNREST. But she completed her quartet in spring 2020 when Covid- 19 had caused pandemia and lockdown of any cultural event.

The first performances in Nov. 2020 took place just before the next corona lockdown. Prior to concerts, workshops are organised with high school music students and their teachers meeting the composer and one of the musicians.

By the time of recording and release of this album, there is once more a most unfortunate war on the European continent, not to mention the climate related Times of Unrest all over the good Planet Earth. The music works of this project express both unrest, threat, hope and even vision of peace.