Mervon Mehta’s stellar tenure as Artistic Director of the Royal Conservatory of Music’s concert series is sadly winding down this year, Mehta having recently announced his retirement – to the general sorrow of Toronto concertgoers.
Since taking the reins in 2009, Mehta (the son of conductor Zubin Mehta and soprano Carmen (Lasky) Mehta) has overseen a period of remarkable growth, expanding the RCM’s reach into the jazz and world music spheres, while also drawing in top-level talent from across classical music. Mehta was the one to oversee the successful launch of Koerner Hall, now one of Canada’s preeminent arts venues, alongside a notable series of “Big Get” concerts featuring the likes of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and superstar soloists Joshua Bell and Yuja Wang (among many, many others), heralding a new era not only for the Conservatory but for the classical world of Toronto.
All of which is to say that this Saturday’s Danish String Quartet was a fine example of Mehta’s deft touch.
The Quartet, internationally acclaimed for their brilliant interpretations of a range of classical music, both capital-C Classical and modern, concluded their recent North American tour with a well-received concert at Koerner Hall on Saturday, February 28, 2026.
The evening began with Schnittke’s difficult – both technically, and, frankly, acoustically – String Quartet No. 2 (1980), a borderline experimental work dedicated to his late friend, the film director Larissa Schepitko, killed in a car accident in 1979. Interweaving ancient Russian choral themes with harsh (often fortissimo) modern tones, it is a bleak, but nevertheless edifying work of art, even if it’s a lot to process for the opening of an evening at the concert hall.
Closing out the first half, the Quartet performed Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead fame)’s own quartet reduction of his Suite from There Will Be Blood. That Paul Thomas Anderson film, which earned Daniel Day-Lewis a well-deserved Oscar in 2008 for the role of Daniel Plainview, marked the beginning of a longstanding collaboration between the rock star and director, culminating in last year’s One Battle After Another (for which Greenwood stands a good chance of winning his first Oscar later this month). As a standalone work of classical music, the Blood Suite (let’s just call it that) is a riveting experience, successfully mirroring the tensions underlying the film.
The program capped off with Maurice Ravel’s beloved String Quartet in F major (1903), easily one of the most performed twentieth-century chamber pieces. Heavily indebted to Ravel’s contemporaries Fauré and Debussy, the Quartet in F is a lovely work, effortlessly moving back and forth between its gentler themes (the first movement is labelled très doux, literally, “very sweet”) and more propulsive elements, including its widely celebrated second, pizzicato-heavy, movement.
Unable to resist the opportunity for an encore, the Quartet closed out with a traditional song – “Goodnight & Farewell” from Denmark’s Faroe Islands – a lyrical, simple, and quite beautiful tune to send the audience on its way.
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The RCM’s performance season continues this March/April; tickets available here.
