Dover Quartet returns to UB for next Slee/Beethoven concert

The award-winning Dover String Quartet will return to UB March 8 for the third of six concerts in this season’s Slee/Beethoven String Quartet Cycle.

The concert, presented by the Department of Music, will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, North Campus.

The program features Beethoven’s Quartet in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3; “Grosse Fuge,” Op. 133; and Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1.

The Dover — Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violin; Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola; and Camden Shaw, cello — performed the first two concerts in the cycle on Sept. 29 and Sept. 30. The musicians will be back in April for the final three concerts in the six-concert cycle.

Tickets for the March 8 concert are $15 for the general public and $10 for UB faculty/staff/alumni, seniors, and non-UB students. UB students are free with ID. Tickets may be purchased in advance in person at the Center for the Arts box office, online at Tickets.com and one hour before concert time at the Slee box office.

Dubbed “the young American string quartet of the moment” by The New Yorker, the Dover Quartet serves as the faculty quartet-in-residence at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music — one of the top music schools in the country — and has performed at such prestigious venues as the Kennedy Center and Wigmore Hall.

The Philadelphia-based quartet, which formed in 2008, catapulted to international stardom following a stunning sweep of the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition, becoming one of the most in-demand ensembles in the world. The Strad, a publication for the string music world, raved that the quartet is “already pulling away from their peers with their exceptional interpretive maturity, tonal refinement and taut ensemble.” 

In 2013-14, the quartet was the first ever quartet-in-residence at the venerated Curtis Institute of Music.

In addition to winning the Grand Prize and all three Special Prizes at the 2013 Banff competition, the Dover Quartet has received other prestigious awards, among them the 2015 Cleveland Quartet Award and the 2016 Hunt Family Award, one of the inaugural Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Awards.

In its early years, the quartet also won grand prize at the Fischoff Competition and special prizes at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition.

The quartet recently released its debut recording, “Tribute: Dover Quartet plays Mozart,” featuring three works by Mozart: his two final string quartets and the Quintet in C minor.