Beethoven Complete String Quartets, Volume I — The Opus 18 Quartets
The Dover Quartet launches the first album in its new three-volume complete Beethoven quartet cycle with the six Opus 18 quartets. Often cited as the epitome of the classical string quartet as developed by Haydn and Mozart, the Opus 18 quartets foreshadow Beethoven’s future innovations. This is the Dover Quartet’s third Cedille Records album.
“If there is a general tendency in op.18 for quartets to fall in one of three main camps: those who focus on technical polish, those who revel in the music’s internal structural logic and ingenuity, and those who go behind the notes to uncover hidden expressive continuities – the Dover players manage to unite all three to a remarkable degree.”
“[...] an exceptional beginning to what promises to be one of my favorite cycles.”
“In these new recordings, Dover Quartet pulls out all the potential this music has to offer. Their performance is crisp and sharp throughout. In some places, they shed new light on those quartets that have never resonated with me.”
“The Dover Quartet is the real deal, easily rising to the very top of the heap, and not just the heap of the many dynamic new arrivals that have burst onto the scene in recent years, but even to the top of that very select tier of the most venerated ensembles in the string quartet domain.”
THE SCHUMANN QUARTETS
Released in October 2019 on Azica Records, this recording comprises Schumann’s three string quartets. Written in 1842, the three quartets mark the apotheosis of his development as a composer.
“In my opinion, the four musicians of the Dover Quartet unite all the cardinal virtues of modern quartet playing: it starts with a sparklingly clean intonation and ends with the intellectual and aesthetic penetration of the works. … The quartet’s new Schumann CD is a reference for me. Within the perfect, finely listened-to chamber music set-up, the quartet captivates with the very robust solo approach of all four musicians. … The four musicians of the Dover Quartet have now reached the top of the Quartet Olympus.”
Voices of Defiance
Voices of Defiance, the Dover Quartet’s second Cedille Records album, presents quartets of passion, hope, and resilience whose beauty defies the horrors that surrounded their creation.
“The young American string quartet of the moment” (The New Yorker) delivers an original, deeply felt program of three European composers’ distinctive responses to the destruction and despair of World War II. Czech composer Viktor Ullmann’s powerful String Quartet No. 3, written in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943, draws inspiration from Debussy’s Impressionism and Schoenberg’s serialism. The ensemble’s muscular approach to Dmitri Shostakovich’s epic String Quartet No. 2 from 1944 emphasizes its tragic qualities, befitting the album’s theme. A captivating discovery for most listeners, Szymon Laks’s lyrical String Quartet No 3, written in 1945 following his evacuation from Auschwitz and liberation from Dachau, revels in folk melodies from his native Poland in contrasting scenes of heartbreak and ecstasy.
“One of the most powerful new releases to cross my desk.”
“An illuminating voyage back to three unforgettable pieces written during World War II . . . undoubtedly one of the most compelling discs released this year”
“An intense slice of devastation . . . The group’s playing in all three works is plangent and rarefied.”
“Dover Quartet’s technical artistry is a given, but there’s also that chamber quartet “X-factor” that can’t be forced. Undoubtedly, their ensemble synergy is luminous in this recording. These are historic compositions, and this recording is among the most important releases of this or any other year.”
“The Dover Quartet digs very deep in the music of Ullmann’s, Laks’s and Shostakovich’s quartets. The main work here, the Second Quartet by Shostakovich, is heard in a haunting performance, sending chills down the spine especially in the extremely dreary Romance. I can’t remember any other quartet playing this music like the ‘Dovers’ do.”
TRIBUTE: DOVER QUARTET PLAYS MOZART
The Dover Quartet makes its recording debut with an all-Mozart album on Cedille Records honoring the soaring young ensemble’s illustrious teachers and coaches, the Guarneri Quartet.
The Dover’s debut album recalls the Guarneri’s own all-Mozart debut album on RCA Red Seal 50 years ago (1966),which featured Mozart’s final two string quartets — in B-Flat, K. 589, and F, K. 590. The Dover’s album on Cedille adds Mozart’s Quintet in C Minor, K. 406, performed with none other than Michael Tree, the Guarneri’s founding violist and one of the Dover’s most valued mentors.
“This deeply affecting debut disc is a tribute to the renowned Guarneri Quartet, with whom the Dovers studied, and whose violist, Michael Tree, joins them in the third of three Mozart items: the great Quintet in C minor, which he adapted from his wind octet Serenade, K388. The other pieces — Mozart’s final string quartets, the second and third of his “Prussian” three, with their lyrically enhanced cello lines — are performed here with surpassing beauty, a glorious timbral richness governed by what feels a continuous thoughtfulness.”
“This is music-making not of the highest order but of the next order. On a number of occasions, I’ve remarked on how blessed we are to be living in a golden age of string playing. The Dover Quartet now takes that to the next level, platinum.”
“The Dover Quartet and Michael Tree get more out of this music than I can remember hearing in any previous performance. But they do it not by being different. One never feels that the music is being pushed or pulled to try to make it more exciting or more profound. They know exactly when to take their time . . . This is glorious music-making and I enjoyed every minute of it. May the Dover Quartt endure for 45 years, as their mentors in the Guarneri did before them.”
