What a joy to be able to extend the Dover Quartet concert this week in Montreal with this second volume of a sum of String quartets by Beethoven who will be a milestone. In the Median quartets, or the three “Razoumovsky” (op. 59 nbone 1 to 3) more the Opp. 74 “The harps” and 95 “Serioso”, it is interesting to compare the Dover to the recent proposal of a very prominent quartet, Ebony (Warner box set), the complete of which was engraved during concerts around the world. The recording of the Dover Quartet illustrates its perfect fusion into an organism of ductile sonic plasticity, while in Ebène the recordings closely track individual musicians and emerging voices. In a way, interpretation being a historical continuum, the Dover Quartet in Beethoven marries the sonorous beauty of the Emersons and the expressive palette of the Takács. That fusion and balance aesthetic could have crumbled with inadequate miking, but Bruce Egre’s directing lives up to the vision.
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