Dover Quartet
Marc-André Hamelin, piano

DOVER QUARTET

Named one of the greatest string quartets of the last 100 years by BBC Music Magazine and “the next Guarneri Quartet” by the Chicago Tribune, the two-time GRAMMY-nominated Dover Quartet is one of the world’s most in-demand chamber ensembles. 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 honors include the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award, and Lincoln Center’s Hunt Family Award. The members are on faculty at the renowned Curtis Institute of Music.

The Dover Quartet’s 2025-26 season features collaborative performances with preeminent artists including Marc-André Hamelin and Edgar Meyer, and performances in internationally renowned venues from Carnegie Hall to Kennedy Center to Konzerthaus Berlin. The quartet’s most recent commission is from Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and a leading composer of American Indian classical music. His new piece, Abokkoli’ Taloowa’ (Woodland Songs), is featured on Woodland Songs, the group’s most recent album, which also includes Tate’s new string-quartet orchestration of Rattle Songs by the Indigenous singer Pura Fé, originally for her a cappella vocal group Ulali. Dvořák’s “American” Quartet, a classic of the repertoire, completes the album, released in August 2025 on the Curtis Studio label.

Recent collaborators of the ensemble include Leif Ove Andsnes, Emanuel Ax, Inon Barnatan, Ray Chen, Anthony McGill, the Pavel Haas Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, and Davóne Tines. The quartet has also recently premiered works by Mason Bates, Steven Mackey, Marc Neikrug, and Chris Rogerson.

The Dover Quartet’s highly acclaimed three-volume recording, Beethoven Complete String Quartets (Cedille Records), was hailed as “meticulously balanced, technically clean-as-a-whistle and intonationally immaculate” (The Strad). Other discography highlights are Encores (Brooklyn Classical), a recording of 10 popular movements from the string quartet repertoire; The Schumann Quartets (Azica Records), which was nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance; Voices of Defiance: 1943, 1944, 1945 (Cedille Records); and an all-Mozart debut recording (Cedille Records), featuring Michael Tree, the late, long-time violist of the Guarneri Quartet. The quartet’s recording of Steven Mackey’s theatrical-musical work Memoir was released on Bridge Records in 2024.

The Dover Quartet draws from the lineage of the distinguished Guarneri, Cleveland, and Vermeer quartets. Its members studied at Curtis Institute of Music, Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, New England Conservatory, and Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. They were mentored extensively by Shmuel Ashkenasi, James Dunham, Norman Fischer, Kenneth Goldsmith, Joseph Silverstein, Arnold Steinhardt, Michael Tree, and Peter Wiley. The Dover Quartet was formed at Curtis in 2008; its name pays tribute to Dover Beach by fellow Curtis alumnus Samuel Barber.

The Dover Quartet plays on the following instruments and proudly endorses Thomastik-Infeld strings:

Joel Link: a very fine Peter Guarneri of Mantua, 1710–15, on generous loan from Irene R. Miller through the Beare’s International Violin Society

Bryan Lee: Nicolas Lupot, Paris, 1810; Samuel Zygmuntowicz, Brooklyn, 2020

Julianne Lee: Robert Brode, 2005

Camden Shaw: Samuel Zygmuntowicz, New York, 2024

MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN, piano

Pianist Marc-André Hamelin, a “performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” (The New York Times), is acclaimed worldwide for his rare combination of profound musicianship and dazzling technique. He is celebrated both for his interpretations of the core repertoire and for his fearless exploration of lesser-known works from 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.

Hamelin’s 2025–2026 season spans North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, with a dynamic mix of orchestral, recital, and chamber music engagements. He opened the season with a tour of Australia and Asia, featuring concerto and recital appearances with the Sydney Symphony under Sir Donald Runnicles, concerto engagements with the Wuxi, Ningbo, and Shenzhen symphonies, and solo recitals in Adelaide, Xiamen, and Shenzhen.

In North America, Hamelin appears with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the San Diego Symphony with Thomas Guggeis, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, on tour. Recital highlights include Chicago Symphony Presents, San Francisco Symphony, Chamber Music Pittsburgh, Keyboard Concerts in Fresno, and Soka Performing Arts Center. In duo with Maria João Pires, he is presented by The Cleveland Orchestra, the Gilmore Piano Festival, and the Fortas Chamber Music Series at the Kennedy Center.

European appearances include Rhapsody in Blue with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester and Vladimir Jurowski, the Marx Piano Concerto with the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich and Fabien Gabel, and performances with the Bremer Philharmoniker, Wigmore Hall, the Schubertiade, MDR Wartburg, and the Chipping Campden Festival. Additional recitals take place in Italy, the Netherlands, and Berlin, along with an extensive duo tour with Maria João Pires to the Philharmonie de Paris, the Barbican, The Hague, Martigny, Toulouse, and Berlin.

Chamber music highlights include the Chausson Concert with Augustin Hadelich and members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the Franck Piano Quintet with the Juilliard String Quartet for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. With Canadian pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin, Hamelin tours to Koerner Hall in Toronto, Salle Bourgie in Montréal, Club musical de Québec, and the Isabel Bader Centre in Kingston.

An exclusive recording artist for Hyperion Records, Hamelin has released more than 90 albums to date, with notable recordings of a broad range of solo, orchestral, and chamber repertoire. In October 2025, Hyperion released Found Objects / Sound Objects, a recording of contemporary works. Recent acclaimed recordings include Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106, and Sonata in C major, Op. 2 No. 3, as well as the Dvořák and Florence Price quintets with the Takács Quartet.

Also a noted composer, Hamelin has written more than 30 works. Many, including his Études and Toccata on “L’homme armé”—commissioned by the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition—are published by Edition Peters. He performed the Toccata in 2023 on NPR’s Tiny Desk alongside works by C.P.E. Bach and William Bolcom. His most recent composition, Mazurka, was commissioned by the Library of Congress to celebrate 100 years of concerts and premiered in April 2024. Featuring nine original pieces, Hamelin’s 2024 album New Piano Works is a survey of some of his own recent works, exhibiting his formidable skill as a composer-pianist whose music imaginatively and virtuosically taps into his musical forebears. “His previous offerings of his own music were rich, but his latest self-portrait album is on another level,” wrote The New York Times. It was Hamelin’s first album of all original compositions since Études (2010).

Hamelin is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the German Record Critics’ Association, and over 20 of its quarterly awards. Other honors include eight Juno Awards, 12 Grammy nominations, the 2018 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize from Northwestern University, and the Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award from the Ontario Arts Foundation. 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. Born in Montreal, Hamelin lives in the Boston area with his wife, Cathy Fuller, a producer and host at Classical WCRB.