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.

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Cedille

“One of the most powerful new releases to cross my desk.”

DAVID ALLEN, THE NEW YORK TIMES
“An illuminating voyage back to three unforgettable pieces written during World War II . . . undoubtedly one of the most compelling discs released this year”

BARBARA JEPSON, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“An intense slice of devastation . . . The group’s playing in all three works is plangent and rarefied.”

CHARLES T. DOWNEY, THE CLASSICAL REVIEW
“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.”

LEWIS J. WHITTINGTON, CONCERTONET
“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.”

REMY FRANCK, PIZZICATO

Voices of Defiance

“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.”

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