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Philadelphia Chamber Music Society presents the Dover Quartet, playing Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate and Melissa Dunphy
Gail Obenreder of Broad Street Review
January 6, 2026
These days, concerts often program a contemporary work added to several compositions from earlier eras. But at their recent invigorating offering, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society (PCMS) and the Dover Quartet upended that scenario. For the first PCMS concert of the new year, this exceptional quartet played only one classic and four works by living composers (including two premieres), a musical afternoon stellar in both conception and virtuosity.
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But before intermission, there was another offering on this rich and fascinating program, a world premiere of a 2025 work by Philadelphia composer Melissa Dunphy. Titled Time Isn’t Real, it was commissioned as part of the PCMS Chamber Music for All series (funded by Diane and Lawrence Blum) to create music that can be played by skilled amateurs as well as by virtuosi like the Dover Quartet. The composer took the stage and spoke warmly of her own background as a string player and the impetus for this composition: her experience during the Covid-19 pandemic and her realization that “our commonsense intuition of time is incorrect.”
The single-movement work (which didn’t sound all that easy) opens relentlessly, its quick rhythms over and under longer lines portraying how time can appear both fast and slow at the same time. Filled with passages that build in intensity and then fall back, the work ends by rising up the harmonic scale to slow legato lines filled with air and grace before returning to a busy musical conclusion. The composer and the quartet received several sustained enthusiastic ovations, and during the ensuing intermission, the audience was buzzing with excitement about this well-conceived program.