Dover Quartet Begins Complete Beethoven Cycle With Opus 18 Quartets On Cedille Records

The Dover Quartet, which holds residencies at Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, launches the first of three installments of their complete cycle of Ludwig van Beethoven's string quartets with the September 11, 2020, release of the composer's Opus 18 set on Cedille Records.

The new recording, Beethoven Complete String Quartets: Volume 1 The Opus 18 Quartets, is a double-album priced as a single disc. The set includes Beethoven's String Quartets No. 1 in F major, No. 2 in G major, No. 3 in D major, No. 4 in C minor, No. 5 in A major, and No. 6 in B-flat major (Cedille Records CDR 90000 198).

The timing of the album's release is a nod to the worldwide celebration of the 250th anniversary of the German composer's birth.

"Recording the Beethoven cycle is something we've always wanted to do," Dover's violist, Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, said in an interview with Cedille Records. "But we wanted to wait until we'd given several complete performances and gotten to know every quartet in performance as well as in the practice room."

Dover has performed the complete quartets at the University of Buffalo's Slee Cycle, the University of Connecticut's Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts, and the Montreal Chamber Music Festival. Seen and Heard International called Dover's Montreal cycle "a musically transformative event."

In Opus 18, composed between 1798 and 1800 and influenced by Mozart and Haydn, "the young Beethoven forged ahead with the latest trends in quartet theatricality," Beethoven scholar Nancy November writes in the album's program notes.

Parajo-van de Stadt echoes that assessment, citing "dramatic contrasts of mood and character" and scoring that's "playful and conversational," such as the "back and forth between instruments" in Quartet No. 2. "It's so much fun to play."

In Opus 18, she says, "We feel like four actors on stage in a theatrical production."

The Dover Quartet's new album was produced by Alan Bice and engineered by Bruce Egre November 30-December 3, 2018, and September 23-26, 2019, at Sauder Concert Hall, Goshen College Music Center, Goshen, Indiana.

Beethoven Complete String Quartets: Volume 1 The Opus 18 Quartets is the Dover Quartet's third Cedille Records release.

The Dover Quartet made its recording debut with 2016's Tribute: Dover Quartet Plays Mozart (Cedille Records CDR 90000 167), honoring their teachers and coaches from the Guarneri Quartet. The album was inspired by the Guarneri's own all-Mozart debut album a half-century earlier. "This is a smart debut from a quartet that has a brilliant future ahead of it," said Audiophile Audition. Fanfare proclaimed, "This is music-making not of the highest order but of the next order."

In 2017, Cedille released the quartet's Voices of Defiance, "their ingeniously designed programme" (BBC Music Magazine) of World War II-era works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Viktor Ullmann and Szymon Laks. (Cedille Records CDR 90000 173). A critic for The New York Times called it "one of the most powerful new releases to cross my desk." The Wall Street Journal found it "an illuminating voyage . . . undoubtedly one of the most compelling discs released this year."

The Dover Quartet first garnered international attention by sweeping the 2013 Banff Competition, at which they won every prize.

Named the Cleveland Quartet Award winner and honored with the coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant, Dover has been hailed as "the young string quartet of the moment" by The New Yorker. Its rise to the top has been "practically meteoric" (Strings).

The Dover Quartet was recently appointed the first Penelope P. Watkins Ensemble in Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music. In addition to its residencies at Northwestern University and the Kennedy Center, it also serves as quartet-in-residence at Chamber Music Northwest, Artosphere, the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, and Peoples' Symphony in New York.

Website: www.doverquartet.com

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