August’s Recording of the Month is the final volume in the Danish String Quartet’s unique Prism series. Each disc has presented one of Beethoven’s late quartets alongside music by Bach and a quartet by a composer who was influenced by Beethoven.

The series kicked off back in the pre-pandemic days of 2018 and a lot of water has flowed under a lot of bridges since then. Clive Paget caught up with violinist Frederik Øland to explore the fifth and final release, what the series has meant to him, and why Prism now feels like a rite of passage.

Where did the idea come from to pair Beethoven with Bach and other composers who came after him?

For a long time we wanted to do something with Beethoven. When we started playing we began with the late quartets, which is totally wrong, but they spoke to us in a very direct manner. I think the complicated nature of those pieces, the struggle and the intensity, the force within them, spoke to four young people. In a way it was easier to approach those pieces because they were complicated. The simplicity of the early pieces was a little bit scary, you know?

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