Parker Quartet Exemplifies the Beauty of Collaborative Performance

As they emerged from the back of the stage at Paine Hall and quietly assumed their places, the Parker Quartet members paused briefly and pensively before beginning their repertoire. Indeed, from the first three notes — a bold, incisive motive from Leoš Janáček’s “String Quartet No. 1” — it was clear that this performance was intent on taking its concert-goers on an incredible journey.

This performance was the inaugural concert of this year’s Blodgett Chamber Music Series at Harvard. The Parker Quartet has been the Music Department’s Blodgett Artists in Residence since 2013. Their program featured four works: the Janáček, Hungarian composer György Kurtág’s “Six Moments Musicaux,” his “Officium Breve in Memoriam Andreæ Szervánsky,” and Claude Debussy’s “String Quartet in G Minor.” Though the repertoire explored a vast mosaic of virtuosity and texture, the four musicians masterfully weaved through it all with their continual, unified dynamism.

This unity was illustrated most explicitly in Janáček’s piece. Based on Leo Tolstoy’s short story “The Kreutzer Sonata,” the work tells a tumultuous tale of desperation, lamentation, and forbidden love. The Parker Quartet evoked these themes right from the opening motive, where two yearning, biting notes played in unison deflect into an impressively restrained dissonance. Indeed, it was their ability to transition between entirely different moods so gracefully — and yet with so much intention — that captured the excellence of their interpretation. Decisive, almost-folksy tunes passed around between the quartet’s members (Daniel Chong, Ken Hamao, Jessica Bodner, and Kee-Hyun Kim) atop still, eerie pedal tones. The dissonance faded almost imperceptibly, away into introspective washes of sound. This mastery of color matches the quartet’s technical prowess. In particular, the execution of ponticello in the third movement — playing on the string instrument’s bridge — was phenomenal, creating a true sense of grit and unease without sacrificing any tone or clarity.

The group displayed these strengths further in Kurtág’s pieces. As they consist exclusively of short movements — there are six in the “Moments Musicaux” and 15 in the “Memoriam” — they pose an additional challenge for structural integrity in performance. Nevertheless, the Parker Quartet deftly managed to present the often-jarringly diverse movements as natural continuations of each other. The polyrhythmic sections, though usually utilizing extreme registers and heightened dissonance, seemed as comfortable and as grounded as the warm, rich chorales that immediately succeeded them. The full-bodied, rigid intentionality of sustained notes in many movements of the “Memoriam” — often held for absurdly long times — was just as clear as that of the few lines played détaché or staccatissimo. Even the most vulnerable notes were imbued with meticulous vitality.

While the Kurtág was, more often than not, delicate and slightly restrained, the Debussy was the opposite: rapturous and sonorous. This rhapsody-like character manifests itself in the quartet’s interpretation right from the very first phrase: The jazz-like melody never fails to embody a novel personality in each iteration, while staying true to its source under the musicians’ able hands. This mastery of call-and-response reflects itself again in the swift, precise syncopations of the second movement and the impossibly sweet phrases of the third. Most impressive of all, perhaps, was the quartet’s ability to build up tension but provide a gratifying ending. The frenetic movement of all the melodic lines at the end of the first movement comes a climactic, but also cathartic, section of cascading unison triplets.

The Parker Quartet’s distinguishing feature is their ability to unite in performance. Not only do they forge bonds between each other through the music they share, but they also join together with their audience, transporting them on a journey through their keen attention to phrasing and character. After all, common intention and collaboration are fundamental to chamber music, and the Parker Quartet exemplifies this most of all.

The Parker Quartet returns to Paine Hall on Friday, Nov. 30 at 8 p.m., featuring works by Beethoven and Shostakovich.