Calder Quartet – Press

“Calder played with absolute technical precision and a musical conviction that made you hold your breath for fear of missing anything.”

“The Calder Quartet played Adès with an authority that belied the technical problems they had to surmount to play so confidently.”

“All the works emerge slowly into existence, taking music that’s basically black and white and turning it into music noir which, as Andrew Norman’s Sabina makes clear, is going to have the intensity of a late-Beethoven quartet in a repetitive dialog, with each of the instruments playing many parts.”

“with repeated listens I have been smiling a good deal as I hear… as to the performances, they are warm, very personal and intimate in keeping with the tenor of the music.”

“The writing doesn’t lie well; it’s in the high register and, in a sea of accidentals, the performers are lucky to play an occasional open string — but you’d never guess it from Wednesday’s lighthearted performance. Really, this was true of the whole evening: Adès’s quartets are, on the continuum of contemporary chamber works, fairly difficult. Yet it all looked easy and fun.”

“[They] play with crystalline communication [it’s] a clear, uniformly blended, and transparent ensemble sound that is capable of changing colors on a dime.”

“The Calder Quartet towers above every other string quartet this reviewer heard this year (or any other year). Each player intensely listens and watches the others, especially the first violinist, and the group sounds as one organism. Never out of tune or rhythm, with amazing dynamic range verging on the impossible, phrasing with elegant nuance, and dramatic and gutsy playing as well as tender delicacy, this group has it all. Plus it has the musicality to perform in any style, ultramodern as well as classical.”

“Performances like these — freshly rethought, impeccably played — do more than provide enjoyable listening. They reveal hidden dimensions, renew a bond with the composer, and justify the continuance of familiar works in the repertory.”

“Tuesday’s concert by the superb Calder Quartet showed that the time-honored string quartet format still provides fertile ground for innovation and surprise in the hands of imaginative, skillful creators.”

“I’ve written before that every time I hear the Calder, the ensemble seems to have reached a new level. That remains true, and now only the stars are the limit, as the Calder takes its place as one of America’s most satisfying — and most enterprising — quartets.”

“while the Calders’ Beethoven is historically informed only in the loosest possible sense – tempos are fresh, rhythms are buoyant and vibrato is deployed as expression demands – their performances have something of the spirit of the composer’s own era.”

“Programs like that – the first of several afforded by the group’s ongoing residency at the Oberlin Conservatory – are simply too rare. Would that more ensembles had what it takes to present 20th-century music in such a concentrated, illuminating, and bold manner.”