By MARK MORFORD
The Dover Quartet’s members are young and maintain an exhausting schedule of national and international concerts. Yet their playing is fresh and lucid, and they have become one of the leading American quartets.
The reasons for that were clear Sunday, when they performed at Smith College’s Sage Hall, in the second concert of the Valley Classical Concerts’ season.
Sage Hall has some of the best acoustics to be found anywhere, and the players said as much in conversation after the concert.
They first played Mozart’s Quartet in F major, K 590, one of the three “Prussian” quartets composed in 1790 for the Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm II, who was himself a cellist. The cello has a prominent part in the first movement of K 590, sensitively played by Camden Shaw.
The other remarkable players are Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt (viola), and Brian Lee and Joel Link (violins).
Mozart composed the other movements without reference to the demands of his patron, and lovely movements they are, perhaps Mozart’s farewell to composition for string quartet, which he had never found to be easy. This performance was very beautiful, a distinguished start to the concert.
The central piece of the program was by the 34-year old American composer Caroline Shaw. She is known not only as the youngest winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, which she won in 2013, but also as a violin soloist and a member of the a cappella group, A Roomful of Teeth.
She performed with the group at Dumbarton Oaks, a research library and collection in Washington, D.C., and held a resident fellowship there. I have often done research in its library and have walked its exceptionally beautiful grounds. This is relevant to the suite in five movements by Shaw that the quartet played. Its title is “Plan & Elevation (The Grounds of Dumbarton Oaks) (2016),” and each movement musically portrays one part of the grounds — except for the last, “The Beech Tree.”
From a simple beginning of chords, enlivened by arpeggios for the viola and second violin, the work progresses pleasantly and convincingly, ending with the original chords again, appropriate to the firmly-rooted beech tree.
The last part of the concert was devoted to the third Razoumovsky Quartet of Beethoven, Opus 59 no.3, in C major. All three of the Opus 59 quartets were played earlier this year by Valley Classical Concerts, a challenge for the audience as well as the players.
To have just one of the three to itself for the whole program after the intermission was sheer pleasure, for players and audience had been refreshed, and the performance was a delight, with the clarity and musicianship of the quartet to be enjoyed by everyone.
Beethoven’s deafness had not advanced to its final stages in 1806, and this quartet has much joy to be shared by players and audience together.
This concert was string quartet playing at its best, and I do not exaggerate. The Dover Quartet already is known for its exceptional musicianship and its rapport with its audiences. It was indeed a privilege to hear such lovely playing, and we must hope that the quartet will soon return.