Dover Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin
After an acclaimed world premiere performance of Hamelin’s own Piano Quintet at La Jolla Music Society SummerFest in 2022, the Dover Quartet and Hamelin bring the work back for a collaborative tour in the 2024-25 season. Both a pianist and composer, Hamelin is celebrated as “a performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” (The New York Times).
Performers
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Dover Quartet
Joel Link, violin
Bryan Lee, violin
Julianne Lee, viola
Camden Shaw, celloNamed one of the greatest string quartets of the last 100 years by BBC Music Magazine, the GRAMMY® nominated Dover Quartet has followed a “practically meteoric” (Strings) trajectory to become one of the most in-demand chamber ensembles in the world. In addition to its faculty role as the Penelope P. Watkins Ensemble in Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Dover Quartet holds residencies with the Kennedy Center, Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, Artosphere, and the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival. The group’s awards include a stunning sweep of all prizes at the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition, grand and first prizes at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and prizes at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition. Its prestigious honors include the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award, and Lincoln Center’s Hunt Family Award.
The Dover Quartet’s 2022–23 season includes collaborations with Edgar Meyer, Joseph Conyers, and Haochen Zhang. The group tours Europe twice, including a return to London’s renowned Wigmore Hall and a debut performance in Copenhagen. The quartet recently premiered Steven Mackey’s theatrical-musical work Memoir, alongside arx duo and actor-narrator Natalie Christa. Other recent and upcoming artist collaborations include Emanuel Ax, Inon Barnaton, Ray Chen, the Escher String Quartet, Bridget Kibbey, Anthony McGill, the Pavel Haas Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, the late Peter Serkin, and Davóne Tines. In addition to two previous albums for the label, Cedille Records releases the third volume of the Dover Quartet’s Beethoven Complete String Quartets recording in October 2022. The quartet’s recording of The Schumann Quartets for Azica Records was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award in 2020. The Dover Quartet was formed in 2008 at the Curtis Institute of Music.
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“A performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” (The New York Times), pianist Marc-André Hamelin is known worldwide for his unrivaled blend of consummate musicianship and brilliant technique in the great works of the established repertoire, as well as for his intrepid exploration of the rarities of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. He regularly performs around the globe with the leading orchestras and conductors of our time, and gives recitals at major concert venues and festivals worldwide.
Highlights of Mr. Hamelin’s 2022–2023 season include a vast variety of repertoire performed with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall (Piano Quintets by Florence Price and Brahms), Berlin Philharmonic and Marek Janowski (Reger’s Piano Concerto), San Diego Symphony and Rafael Payare (Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2), Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Gustavo Gimeno (Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie), Netherlands Philharmonic and Joshua Weilerstein (Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue), and Symphony Nova Scotia and Holly Mathieson (Grieg’s Piano Concerto). Recital appearances take Mr. Hamelin to Vienna, Chicago, Toronto, Montréal, Napa Valley, São Paulo, and Bogotá, among other venues across the world.
The summer of 2022 included performances at many festivals including Caramoor with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Tanglewood, Domaine Forget, La Jolla, Schubertiade, and Festival International Piano.
Mr. Hamelin is an exclusive recording artist for Hyperion Records, where his discography spans more than 70 albums, with notable recordings of a broad range of solo, orchestral, and chamber repertoire. In January 2022, the label released a two-disc set of C. P. E. Bach’s sonatas and rondos that received wide critical acclaim and in June 2022, Hyperion released the two-disc set of William Bolcom’s The Complete Rags.
Mr. Hamelin has composed music throughout his career, with over 30 compositions to his name. The majority of those works—including the Etudes and Toccata on L’homme armé,
commissioned by the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition—are published by Edition Peters. His most recent work, his Piano Quintet, was premiered in August 2022 by himself and the celebrated Dover Quartet at La Jolla Music Society.Mr. Hamelin makes his home in the Boston area with his wife, Cathy Fuller, a producer and host at Classical WCRB. Born in Montreal, he is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the German Record Critics’ Association, and has received seven Juno Awards and 11 Grammy nominations, and the 2018 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music. In December 2020, he was awarded the Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Keyboard Artistry from the Ontario Arts Foundation. Mr. Hamelin is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Québec, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada.