Swiss composer-clarinetist Jürg Frey celebrated his seventieth birthday final 12 months and the 2 new albums reviewed beneath characterize solely a part of his wealthy exercise, specializing in exploring large, quiet sound areas.

Keiko Shichijo – Jürg Frey: Les Signes Passagers (elsewhere, 2023)

Les signes passagers (passenger indicators) provides seven items for solo
fortepiano written by Frey in 2021, commissioned by the Japanese,
Amsterdam-based, up to date pianist Keiko Shichijo (who carried out earlier than
Frey’s Piano Items, Nr. 1-3 (1991)), and carried out on a duplicate of early
fortepiano (after Anton Walter, ca.1792, with equal beating victorian
tuning, near equal temperament), which Shichijo already explored earlier than.
These items had been premiered by Shichijo on the Concertgebouw Brugge In
Belgium throughout the SLOW Pageant in February 2022, and recorded on the identical
location in April 2023, with the presence of Frey. Frey painted the duvet
art work.

Frey says: “If the fashionable piano tries to get a continuing brilliance over the
complete keyboard, within the fortepiano there are worlds between the center, the
excessive and the low register. The entire development of the instrument is so
refined, and each motion, the slightest change in registers and density of
chords instantly opens a wide range of colours, new views and
feelings”.

Frey and Shichijo supply an premature sense of time and area with the classic
keyboard instrument. Shichijo’s masterful enjoying stresses the delicate,
breathy and spacious tones and overtones of the fortepiano, with all its
shades and silent pauses, and explores anew its distinct sonic vary. Les
signes passagers suggests ascetic and refined, emotional landscapes that
“generally shine by means of, not on the floor”, as Frey famous, however sonic
landscapes that draw the listener deeper and deeper into its hypnotic
atmospheres.

Quatuor Bozzini – Jürg Frey: String Quartet No. 4 (Assortment QB, 2024)

String Quartet No. 4 is the third string quartet Frey composed for Canadian,
Montréal-based up to date ensemble Quatuor Bozzini (first violinist Alissa
Cheung, second violinist Clemens Merkel and Alissa Cheung, violist Stéphanie
Bozzini and cellist Isabelle Bozzini) over twent years of collaboration (the
first one, String Quartets, was recorded in 2004, Version Wandelweiser
Information, 2006). This 65-minute, five-movement composition was written
between 2018 and 2020 (and accomplished earlier than Frey composed Les signes
passagers). It was first premiered – nearly – on the MaerzMusikl Pageant
in Berlin in March 2021 and carried out reside for the primary time on the Solely
Join Pageant in Oslo in April 2022 and refined throughout the recording with
Quatuor Bozzini in Montréal in Might 2023.

Frey describes this composition as “gradual, generally static, usually delicately
shifting between standstill and motion. And but, after greater than an hour,
this music has arrived at one other place. Standstill, little occurs, — it’s
this ambiance from which my music emerges and to which it at all times returns.
Generally it simply stays there. That is my world”.

String Quartet No. 4 is a peaceful and delightful composition that radiates a
uncommon sense of poetic weightlessness looking for silence in sound, with a
profound emotional impact. It’s developed slowly, with minimalist and gradual
shifts and virtually clear dissonances, at all times hinting about its deeper,
secret wonders, evoking a musical backyard that asks you to understand its
delicate, altering colours as they blossom in their very own accord. And, like all
Frey’s compositions, it’s carried out masterfully by Quatuor Bozzini with
exact sensitivity for shade, sound and silence in Frey’s aesthetics.

See: https://vimeo.com/719015494  (requires login)

If you wish to hearken to Frey and violinist Mrekel discussing the
compositional course of with composer Benjamin Tassie on Resonance FM: