Parker Quartet featuring Kim Kashkashian, viola

Saturday, March 12, 2016 | 8:00 pm

Baldwin Auditorium

The GRAMMY-winning Parker Quartet brings “pinpoint precision and a spectacular sense of urgency” (Boston Globe) to their broad repertoire and multitude of musical collaborations. Recently appointed Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University’s Department of Music, they are quickly becoming known as formidable interpreters of romantic and contemporary works.

Beethoven’s op. 95 Quartet — which he dubbed “Serioso”— is the shortest in his catalogue; compared to his late essays in the genre, it is a masterpiece of compactness and intensity. Op. 95 is followed by a new piece by Chicago composer Augusta Read Thomas, written in celebration of the Meselson-Stahl DNA replication discovery in 1958. After intermission, the quartet is joined by their former mentor, GRAMMY-winning violist Kim Kashkashian, for Dvořák’s Quintet op. 97, written during his 1893 stay at a Bohemian enclave in Iowa.

Program