by Mike Telin
Since winning the grand prize and three special prizes at the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition, the Dover Quartet — Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violins, Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola, and Camden Shaw, cello — have quickly risen to the forefront of young, internationally touring string quartets. Following that 2013 breakthrough, the ensemble has added to their resume a Cleveland Quartet Award, a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, and most recently an Avery Fisher Career Grant.
On Tuesday, February 13 at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, the Dover Quartet will return to the Cleveland Chamber Music Society stage with a program that will include Mozart’s Quartet in d, K. 421, Schoenberg’s Quartet in D, and Zemlinsky’s Quartet No. 2. Tickets are available online.
Debra Nagy and her colleagues of Les Délices usually dedicate themselves to bringing the music of 17th- and 18th-century France alive for modern ears. But this weekend, the period instrument ensemble will push the clock back to the 14th century — not an era of powdered wigs and salons, but a time of knights, crusades, courtly love, and increasing secularization.
“When I put together a program, I look for interesting threads that connect the pieces, but I also look at how the pieces resonate with me,” Daniel Meyer, music director of the Asheville Symphony and Erie Philharmonic, said in a recent conversation. “I’m going to be interpreting them, putting my stamp on them, and standing in front of incredibly trained musicians who will want to know my opinion, so it’s important that I have a personal connection to the works.”
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Over the past eight years, Les Délices has presented well-researched, thought-provoking, and highly entertaining concerts that explore music and topics of the French Baroque.
Departing from its normal Saturday evening time slot, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society closed its International Series with a duo recital by Sérgio and Odair Assad on Sunday afternoon, April 30 at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. Though their styles of playing are different, the Brazilian-born brothers have been performing as a duo for 52 years, and know each other so well that they could probably play a recital blindfolded.
