By THIRSTY
The Dover Quartet made its recording debut in 2016 on Cedille
Records with an album entitled Tribute – Dover
Quartet Plays Mozart. The work is an all-Mozart program that recalls the
1965 debut of the Guarneri Quartet, whose founding violist, Michael Tree,
joined on the recording. The Sunday
Times (London) called it a “deeply affecting debut disc,” Strings Magazine called the rise of the
Quartet “practically meteoric” and the
Chicago Tribune wrote “…the Dover Quartet players have it in them to become
the next Guarneri Quartet – they’re that good.”
Members of the Dover Quartet include: Joel Link, violin;
Bryan Lee, violin; Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola; and, Camden Shaw, cello,
and the Quartet serves as the Quartet-in-Residence at the Bienen School of
Music of Northwestern University.
 |
| Dover Quartet |
In 2017-18, the Dover Quartet performed more than one hundred
concerts in North America and Europe. They opened their season with
performances at the Texas Performing Arts, Chamber Music Houston and
Performance Santa Fe before appearing at the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia
Chamber Music Society, Library of Congress, Detroit Chamber Music Society and
the La Jolla Music Society. The Quartet also performed with violinist Janine
Jansen and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium.
The ensemble was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2017
and the Cleveland Quartet Award for 2016–2017 and for 2017–2018.
Their second Cedille album, Voices of Defiance: 1943, 1944, 1945,
showcases three World War II-era European works that express distinctive
responses to the turmoil and destruction that surrounded their creation. The
album includes Czech composer Viktor Ullmann’s String Quartet No. 3, Op. 46, written in the Theresienstadt
concentration camp in 1943; Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68, written in a Soviet-run artists’
retreat in 1944; and, Polish composer Szymon
Laks’s String Quartet No. 3, written
in 1945 following his evacuation from Auschwitz and liberation from the Dachau
concentration camp.
Stay Thirsty Magazine is proud to feature the Dover
Quartet and to call attention to this exceptional group of musicians. They are
clearly worth watching as their bright future unfolds.
(Dover Quartet photo: credit Carlin Ma)
Links: