Contrasting American traditions, Tate premiere highlight Dover Quartet program

Wed Oct 23, 2024 at 11:14 am
By William McGinney
The Dover Quartet performed last weekend in a concert presented by the Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth. Photo: Roy Cox

The Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth hosted the Dover String Quartet on their “Tate Commission” world premiere tour Saturday at the Modern Art Museum. The program included works inspired by Native American traditions and vernacular American practices more broadly. 

The Dover Quartet—violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violist Julianne Lee and cellist Camden Shaw—is the Penelope P. Watkins ensemble in residence at the Curtis Institute of Music, where all members are on the faculty.

The concert led off with Strum (2012) by Jessie Montgomery, former composer in residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Strum takes the sounds of plucked string instruments as a point of departure, especially the sounds and styles of folk and popular instruments such as guitar, banjo and mandolin.  Violinists Link and Lee began this piece with pizzicato rhythmic patterns that were soon joined by am Arco theme from Shaw. Strum proceeded as a series of episodes featuring bowed melodies accompanied by or in contrast with pizzicato motifs that are shared and passed among the players. 

The main work on the program was Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s Abokkoli’Taloowa’ (Woodland Songs), commissioned by CMSFW among others. 

Tate, an award-winning composer, is a member of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma. Woodland Songs is in five movements, each one named for an animal embodying a distinct character and spirit within Chickasaw culture. Tate describes each movement as “like an epitome—a deep, dramatic and rhapsodic expression of my feelings of being a Chickasaw man from a beautiful and robust culture.”  

The movements evoked the quality of each animal through a range of techniques and textures. 

“Fani’ (Squirrel)” featured skittering tremolos alternating with majestic double-stopped fifths by all the players before closing with tremolos as it had began.  “Foshi’ (Bird)” began with Lee’s viola sounding a melody over pizzicato ostinato from the rest of the ensemble; this shifted to sustained chords sounding between alternating pairs before closing with the opening ostinati sounding among the same pairings. 

“Issi’ (Deer)” was colored throughout by glassy harmonics, initially underscoring a melody by Lee’s violin before alternating with lush, double-stopped fifths.  “Shawi’ (Raccoon)” began with a dynamically swelling tremolo; violinists Link and Lee then introduced a melody in octaves over ostinati sounded by Lee’s viola and Shaw’s cello.  These roles were then reversed before the movement closes with an ostinato.

“Nanni’ (Fish),” the final movement, also began with syncopated, pizzicato that were quickly punctuated by bowed glissandi in successive voices.  These gave way to double-stopped fifths over tremolos reminiscent of folk fiddles that carried the movement to its end.  

Woodland Songs is engaging in its sonic variety, even if the connections between the instrumental sounds and the animal names of the titles were not always apparent (Tate encourages listeners to “create their own emotional stor[ies] of each animal”). Throughout all the movements, the Dover Quartet members displayed a rhythmic precision and suppleness that maintained the forward momentum of the entire piece.

Tate was also responsible for Rattle Songs, an arrangement created in partnership with the Dover Quartet of Native songs originally recorded by the vocal group Ulali.  

Rattle Songs had originally been composed by the Tuscarora artist Pura Fé and recorded by the group Ulali in 1987.  It consists of texts originally created as part of shell-shaking rituals. Tate describes his orchestration as “classically impressionistic,” purposely refashioning the melodies for the string quartet medium rather than attempting to imitate the sounds of Ulali’s original performance.  The seven short songs are performed successively with minimal pauses between them.  Tate’s orchestration uses many of the same textures and techniques heard in Woodland Songs, and the arrangements saw the players combined into many of the same groupings. One distinctive sonic feature carried over from the original source is the strong, relentless pulse that undergirds the short movements throughout.

The second half of the program comprised Antonin Dvořák’s “America” Quartet (No. 12, Op. 96), so named because it was composed during the composer’s sojourn in the U.S.

The bustling first movement mixes two themes evocative of spiritual melodies, the first introduced by Lee’s viola and the second by Link’s violin. Link also opened the second movement with a plaintive melody that seems inspired by Native American chanting; he is joined by Bryan Lee on second violin in an expanded meditation on this tune during the middle section of this movement. 

The principal theme of the spirited scherzo features call and response between subsets of the ensemble and the whole—Lee and Shaw on viola and cello to start, echoed by the three upper voices.  The brisk finale was marked by a distinctive rhythmic figure in the lower voices accompanying a jaunty melody sounded by Link that brought to quartet to a rousing conclusion.  

Through it all, the crisp articulation and singing tones of the Dover Quartet deftly communicated Dvořák’s optimistic vision of America’s soundscape.

The Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth’s next concert takes place November 16. The program includes Dvořák’s Terzetto in C major, Mozart’s String Quintet No. 2 in C minor, and Beethoven’s String Quintet in C major “Storm.” cmsfw


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