Apartment House perform three spellbinding chamber works by estimable Swiss minimalist composer Jurg Frey - some of his first recordings since stepping back from playing clarinet due to illness, and reconsidering his future work.
Frey’s latest work for Sheffield’s Another Timbre, the label he has been most closely associated with aside to Editions Wandelweiser, presents two single movement pieces, plus a departure from the form in the multi-part movement ‘L’Etat De Simplicite’. Written between 2014-2021, the pieces were originally intended for release prior to the pandemic but, due to obvious reasons, and an unfortunate illness during that period that forced Frey to stop playing clarinet, they were recorded at Goldsmith’s in summer 2022, and feature works reimagined due to circumstances.
The title part for quintet - Raymond Brien (bass clarinet), Anton Lukoszevieze (cello), Heather Roche (clarinet), Kerry Yong (piano), and Mira Benjamin (violin) - has a quietly floral, low-lit quality that plays with perceptions of the idea of “landscape” inspired by gardening, and the composers thoughts of its historic hierarchies - from Japanese gardens to French Baroque - and the final 30’ work ‘Movement, Ground, Fragility’ reworks a former composition, written for Wandelweiser festival in Minneapolis, into an atmospheric architecture as evocative as strolling through a midnight garden, accompanied by Simon Limbrick’s sonorous percussion.
The big attraction however, is Frey’s four-part ‘L’Etat De Simplicite’, which, unusually for him, unfolds over distinct sections of almost-perceptible melody, as with the haunting ‘Toucher L’air’, contrasting with the relative cinematic might of ‘La Discrète Plénitude’ and a return to zero in ‘Les Zones Neutres’, a reference to the empty spaces appearing in Patrick Modiano’s novel of the same name, and evoked via patient, tenebrious shading.
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Apartment House perform three spellbinding chamber works by estimable Swiss minimalist composer Jurg Frey - some of his first recordings since stepping back from playing clarinet due to illness, and reconsidering his future work.
Frey’s latest work for Sheffield’s Another Timbre, the label he has been most closely associated with aside to Editions Wandelweiser, presents two single movement pieces, plus a departure from the form in the multi-part movement ‘L’Etat De Simplicite’. Written between 2014-2021, the pieces were originally intended for release prior to the pandemic but, due to obvious reasons, and an unfortunate illness during that period that forced Frey to stop playing clarinet, they were recorded at Goldsmith’s in summer 2022, and feature works reimagined due to circumstances.
The title part for quintet - Raymond Brien (bass clarinet), Anton Lukoszevieze (cello), Heather Roche (clarinet), Kerry Yong (piano), and Mira Benjamin (violin) - has a quietly floral, low-lit quality that plays with perceptions of the idea of “landscape” inspired by gardening, and the composers thoughts of its historic hierarchies - from Japanese gardens to French Baroque - and the final 30’ work ‘Movement, Ground, Fragility’ reworks a former composition, written for Wandelweiser festival in Minneapolis, into an atmospheric architecture as evocative as strolling through a midnight garden, accompanied by Simon Limbrick’s sonorous percussion.
The big attraction however, is Frey’s four-part ‘L’Etat De Simplicite’, which, unusually for him, unfolds over distinct sections of almost-perceptible melody, as with the haunting ‘Toucher L’air’, contrasting with the relative cinematic might of ‘La Discrète Plénitude’ and a return to zero in ‘Les Zones Neutres’, a reference to the empty spaces appearing in Patrick Modiano’s novel of the same name, and evoked via patient, tenebrious shading.