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.”

    PAUL DRIVER, SUNDAY TIMES (LONDON)

  • “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.”

    JERRY DUBINS, FANFARE

  • “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.”

    PAUL E. ROBINSON, MUSICAL TORONTO

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