Quatuor Bozzini is reissuing an album on its own label that gained fame when Björk mentioned it in an interview. It’s String Quartets by Jürg Frey, published by Éditions Wandelweiser in 2006. It is now out of print.
String Quartets presents the Swiss composer’s first two string quartets, including the masterly and almost ghostly Streichquartett 2. For almost half an hour, delicate chords constructed in semitone harmonics and dynamics that rarely exceed triple piano follow one another with highly subtle transformations, creating a disembodied, spectral and vaporous atmosphere. Harmony is blurred to the point where a gradually building consonant framework is perceived rather than heard. Frey is an ascetic of Minimalism.
The first quartet is based on the same structural thinking, though it is more assertive in its gestures and volume of sound. Two miniatures complete the programme, the “Zwei allerletze Sächelchen” (Two very last things), each lasting no more than a minute. Like musical haikus, they disappear as soon as they are recited, leaving the audience to deepen their understanding long after listening. Since this album, the Bozzinis have premiered other works by Frey, including Quartet No. 4, which received critical acclaim last year. A monument to austere, stoic minimalism.
