Doppelgänger (2020)

After my very first premiere with professional musicians in 1981, I had a very inspiring conversation with the cellist in the ensemble who had performed my piece: “You should listen to the great G major quartet by Schubert”, he said. So – I did that, and since then the piece has been one of “my” pieces, and that is probably why I immediately said: “It has to be the G major quartet”, when The Danish String Quartet asked me to compose a piece in some way referring to one of the late Schubert quartets.

It became “Doppelgänger” – Doppelgänger not only because of connections to the quartet by Schubert – actually the only traces of Schubert in my piece are some recurring clean and pure G major chords often transformed, as in the Schubert quartet, to g-minor.

It is called Doppelgänger more for what is going on inside the music – inside the quartet. The piece is in two movements, and between and within them there are mirror effects – shadows of music arrive and create new contours. A fugue emerges, and later the fugue can be seen from behind, when it is played backwards. There I was thinking of Schubert. His fight with fugues. A fight I took on…

“Doppelgänger” is dedicated to Danish String Quartet.