Escher String Quartet & Dover Quartet

For whatever reason, the string octet—usually four violins, two violas, two cellos—has been the domain of young composers. The best-known works for the ensemble, three of which are on display at this concert, were written by teenagers. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his two-movement work at eighteen, taking full advantage of the abundance by piling lines on top of each other and saturating the sonic field with reckless, discordant glee. Felix Mendelssohn’s famous octet, written when he was only sixteen, feels, at times, like a violin concerto, with occasional digressions and interjections from the rest of the band. And George Enescu’s octet, which he composed over a year and a half when he was around age nineteen, is practically symphonic in scope and density. He wrote of it, “An engineer launching his first suspension bridge over a river, could not feel more anxiety than I felt when I set out to darken my paper.”