Former students both of Houston’s Rice University Shepherd School of Music and of Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute – where its members were appointed ensemble-in-residence in 2020 – the group takes its name from Samuel Barber’s Dover Beach for medium voice and string quartet; it has gone on to win wide praise for its recordings, including its complete Beethoven series. Schnittke’s Third Quartet (1983) is a polystylistic work that quotes, among other things, Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge.