Kurtág: Six Moments Musicaux; Officium Breve; Dvořák: String Quintet Op. 97

The sparse music of György Kurtág and the precise, intense sound of the Parker Quartet are both ideally suited to the engineering world of the ECM label, and just looking at this release, one is reasonably sure of a satisfying experience of contemporary music, but it's even better than one might expect. The Parker Quartet constructs an intelligent program, united less by the fact that Kurtág once worked as a chamber music coach (as noted by Paul Griffiths in his great notes) than by strands of mentorship and memorial. Both of the Kurtág pieces are shot through with remembrances of figures important in the composer's life and creativity: the Six moments musicaux, Op. 44, refer to pianist György Sebők, to Messiaen, and to Leoš Janáček, while the Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervánszky, Op. 28, consists of a series of fragments, as short as 20 seconds, that are like fleeting memories not only of composer Szervánszky but also of Anton Webern's Second Cantata, Op. 31. In the Parker Quartet's performance, these short movements are pregnant with meaning. Even the Dvořák String Quintet in E flat major, Op. 97, reflects mentorship in a way; even more than the Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 ("From the New World"), it draws on the introduction to African American spirituals imparted to Dvořák by singer Harry Thacker Burleigh. On top of this, in the Dvořák, the Parker Quartet is joined by its mentor, violist Kim Kashkashian. The best reason to hear this album is that the performance of the Dvořák is superb, one of the very best available. The world is full of phoned-in performances of standard repertory by musicians who can't wait to get to the contemporary stuff, but that does not happen here. The players let the music breathe and give plenty of room to the melodic material shaped by African American and perhaps Native American music. Both exacting and affecting, this is a superior release.