With his characteristic wit and quirkiness, Grammy-nominated Danish composer Poul Ruders has summed up his mission as a composer as being “To entertain, to enrich, and to disturb, not necessarily in that order.” Born in Ringsted, Denmark in 1949, Ruders achieved international fame with his opera The Handmaid‘s Tale (1996-98), a work whose aching tenderness, grotesque irony, despair and timeliness has established a permanent place in the repertoire. Ruders’ own intuitive development as a composer has enabled him to create works which manage to be strikingly modern, yet avoiding any the clichés of European modernism, but above all, imbued with the power to speak to the emotions of an audience. The current program features works spanning 30 years, beginning with the elliptical Throne (1989) for clarinet and piano and two major chamber works, the Clarinet Quintet and Piano Quartet, dating from 2014 and 2016 respectively. The Rudersdal Chamber Players, founded in 2017 by violinist Christine Pryn, are the ideal interpreters for Ruders stylistically fluid scores, finding the classical “roots” in works like the Clarinet Quintet (beautifully performed by Jonas Frølund, one of the most talented clarinet players of his generation in the world today) as well as the surprising intimacy of the Piano Quartet.