Dover Quartet: Woodland Songs

The Strad Issue: November 2025

Description: A much-loved work shines in a fresh context

Musicians: Dover Quartet

Works: Dvořák: String Quartet no.12 ‘American’. Fé Crescioni: Rattle Songs. Tate: Woodland Songs

Catalogue number: CURTIS STUDIO PLAT28050

Resident ensemble at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute, where the group formed in 2008, the Dover Quartet has come up with a neat and provocative concept for its new release on the institution’s own label.

If the then US-based Antonín Dvořák was out to establish an authentically American sound and style in works such as his ‘American’ Quartet – drawing on African American and indigenous musics to do so – then why not combine those very elements on a single disc? The results here are impeccably played, brimming over with character, and – yes – entirely revelatory.

Pura Fé Crescioni’s Rattle Songs, arranged for quartet from their vocal original by Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, are vivid and joyfully persuasive in their melodic and harmonic simplicity, while Tate himself conjures far more richness and variety in his own lush, inventive Woodland Songs, portraits of animals with iconic significance in the culture of his own Chickasaw nation, from an urgent, nervy squirrel to a sparky, angular raccoon. The Dover players find a real orchestral breadth of sound in Tate’s sometimes piquant textures and navigate a sure course through his often sectional forms.

Hearing Dvořák’s ‘American’ Quartet in the context of these fresh, raw-edged works, however, brings whole new insights into the composer’s folksy harmonic sidesteps and chugging, syncopated rhythms. It makes for a remarkably enlightening combination of music, all performed with verve and insight by the Dover players, and captured in close, rich, immaculate sound.

DAVID KETTLE