release date:07.03.2025 on Ambiances Magnétiques
From Collection QB, Quatuor Bozzini‘s imprint, comes a legendary recording originally produced by Editions Wandelweiser in 2006. This reissue commemorates the quartet’s 25th anniversary, and brings back an essential piece of their eclectic discography back into circulation. Swiss composer Jürg Frey‘s String Quartets disc was met with enthusiasm upon its release and has since been name-checked by Björk (in her interview with the Creative Independent), praised by beloved critic Alex Ross, and cited as inspiration for many others, and justifiably so. Its initial run is now out-of-print.
This disc’s centrepiece is the ethereal 29-minute Streichquartett 2, which achieves its beautifully faint gauzy surface by subjecting a long string of slow chords to a fingering technique known as half-tone harmonics which blurs both the pitch and colour of each sonority. The work floats on the very brink of audibility for its entire duration, and audiences feel the precarious weightlessness intrinsic to its execution, even on recording. Many regard the piece as nothing short of a landmark in the string quartet tradition, fragile and majestic in equal measure. Grant Chu Covell remarked in La Folia that it “will take your breath away, notwithstanding a resemblance to one’s final earthly moments.”
In the original liner notes the composer cites Agnes Martin’s art as an influence on his approach—”There was a kind of visibility to her art, which I felt corresponded to the audibility in my music. Audibility: the moment when sound waves move in space and the air touches the body. The eardrum is the sensory connection between the outside and the inside world: we hear the sound and the composition.” Indeed, Streichquartett 2‘s hushed smears of sound almost appear to be more about pure sensation than they are about any of the standard musical parameters.
photo: Elisabeth-Frey-Bachli
The second quartet is preceded by several other shorter works. His first quartet, from 1988, offers a personal and more restrained vision of the soft, insistent chromaticism innovated by Morton Feldman in his latter years. (Unbetitelt) VI probes subtle variations of colour, its stately, mostly monophonic unfolding evoking plainchant. Frey distributes a scale-driven melodic figure between the various instruments, only sparingly introducing harmony. As with the composer’s other works, its ostensible simplicity gently pulls the ear into the very core of the sounds, and the quartet’s characteristically immaculate performance only serves to amplify this mesmeric magic. The diptych Zwei allerletze Sächelchen (Two very last things) is striking in its delicate brevity. Each of its two movements are under a minute—just enough time to trace a fleeting contour in sound.
photo: Michael Slobodian
Quatuor Bozzini has gone on to record all of Jürg Frey’s subsequent quartets, each of which has commanded similar critical acclaim. Last year’s recording of String Quartet No. 4 was listed among Alex Ross’ 15 Notable Recording of 2024 in the New Yorker, and is a finalist for the Conseil québécois de la musique Prix Opus. Naturally, the quartet brings the meticulous patience that’s become their signature as an ensemble to all of these recordings. Since their inception, the Bozzinis have worked closely with some of the most important minds in contemporary music from Cassandra Miller to Christian Wolff, and Éliane Radigue to Yannis Kyriakides. Their eagerness to explore is matched by a rigorous ear for quality and this combination has made them one of the most important chamber ensembles today, giving rise to a long string of commissioned works and some 500 premieres spanning myriad compositional approaches.
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JÜRG FREY + QUATUOR BOZZINI – String Quartets (reissue/ rééditon)
COLLECTION QB (CQB 235) (CD/DL)
Tracklist:
1. Streichquartett 1988 (10:55)
2. (Unbetitelt) VI 1990, 91 (18:54)
3-4 Zwei allerletze Sächelchen 1990
I. Mailied (0:49)
II. Vorbei (0:27)
5. Streichquartett 2 1998-2000 (28:59)
QUATUOR BOZZINI:
Nadia Francavilla — violin I / violon I
Clemens Merkel — violin II/ violon II
Stéphanie Bozzini — viola/ alto
Isabelle Bozzini — cello/ violoncelle