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: 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 justifably 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 foats 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 infuence 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.

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 feeting contour in sound.

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.

Originally released in 2006, this reissue assembles the Swiss composer’s first two quartets and other works, where Quatuor Bozzini’s inimitable strings illuminate the timeless vision.

Streichquartett leads with Nadia Francavilla’s and Clemens Markel’s violin’s radiating mystery and hypnotic ideas across the cinematic and occasionally plucked 11 minutes, and (Unbetitelt) VI follows with the rich bowing of the violins alongside Isabelle Bozzini’s well timed cello bouts.

The back half belongs to the 2 segments of Zwei allerletze Sachelchen, where atmospheric is key and dreaminess enters in ways that are cryptic and short lived, while Streichquartett exits with nearly 30 minutes of gentle waves of ambience that make great use of Stephanie Bozzini’s viola.

An often slow moving body of work, the Montréal quartet again impress us with their detail, as seemingly simple moments unfold with beauty, wonder and emotion that truly does justice to Frey’s work.

A notable composer of contemporary music, an equally notable classical quartet from Canada and five compositions dating back to the previous century, performed at the beginning of the next and now re-edited. The first two last a dozen minutes each, the next two are miniatures of a few tens of seconds, while the last is almost half an hour long, a uniquely beautiful epic of fading sounds.

The first story is a kind of painful trepidation, a tearful, joyless lullaby, in the form of constant repetition built up by oppositions, both in terms of sound and drama. The narrative undulates, adhering with full determination to the idea of minimalism and sometimes constitutive reductionism. Silence plays an important role here, which from time to time smuggles in scraps of fading melody. The second track seems to reach for the aesthetics of early music, is more brooding, and is definitely the most classical in the album set. The seemingly straightforward narrative undergoes a systematic breakdown here, but it does not lose the mark of a mellow exposition. It often takes one step forward and then two back. It swallows small portions of melody, chews on them and then puts them back. The very ending seems to carry a note of mysterious optimism. Of the annotated miniatures, the first seeks a bottom, the second shines with a screeching post-baroque. The fifth track occupies half the album and definitively constitutes its quality. It flows from the very bottom of the dark crypt, straining through clenched teeth, reminiscent of a procession of the dead. It is unspeakably beautiful, although built with extremely reductionist methods. A great omission that moves mountains. A life that has long borne the mark of an irretrievable death. It smells of early music, the perfect soundtrack to an exceptionally slow dying.

Translated from Polish.

Released via the Quatuor Bozzini run and headed Collection QB label on March 7th, 2k25 is String Quartets, a collaborational release which sees the ensemble take on pieces by Swiss composer Jürg Frey. Originally put out on the circuit via Edition Wandelweiser in 2006 the recent re-issue was driven by the ensembles 25th anniversary the hour long album features a total of four compositions written in the period from 1988 to the year 2000, opening with Streichquartett — an eleven minutes spanning exploration of repetitive yet ever so slightly shifting Minimal Music with all four instruments playing in perfect unison whilst continuously meandering around a seemingly set set of parameters when it comes to pitch and sustain. With (Unbetitelt) VI we’re taken into a stripped down, yet emotionally touching world of Contemporary Classical composition whereas the two micro-pieces in Zwei allerletzte Sächelchen — Mailied and Vorbei weigh in a brief excursion into unscathed rural beauty before the albums main piece Streichquartett 2 rounds things off in a surprisingly Dark Ambient-leaning manner, serving stripped down, yet highly fascinating, hypnotic and time-dissolving micro-movements at the very brink of the audible spectrum which therefore turn out to be quite an essential piece of contemporary Deep Listening Music for all genre aficionados. Go check!

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 String Quartet No. 4, which received critical acclaim last year. A monument to austere, stoic minimalism.

Translated from French.

Quatuor Bozzini’s reissue of Jürg Frey: String Quartets commemorates the quartet’s 25th anniversary and features five works documenting Frey’s compositional development from 1988 to 2000. The album’s centerpiece, the 29-minute Streichquartett 2, uses a fingering technique called half-tone harmonics that blurs pitch and timbre, creating an ethereal sound that hovers at the threshold of audibility. The hypnotic nature of this music has stopped me in my tracks, pulling me in closer with each listen.

Swiss composer Frey’s approach draws from visual artist Agnes Martin, whose work Frey encountered while composing his first quartet in 1988. As he explains in the liner notes, “There was a kind of visibility to her art, which I felt corresponded to the audibility in my music.” This connection between sensory experience and minimal expression runs throughout the album, from the restrained chromaticism of Streichquartett to the almost monophonic unfolding of (Unbetitelt) VI and the brief, delicate sketches of Zwei allerletzte Sächelchen (which should not be listened to while operating heavy equipment).

The Bozzini’s precise execution amplifies the music’s mesmerizing qualities, highlighting why they’ve become one of contemporary music’s most significant ensembles, having premiered approximately 500 works across diverse compositional approaches.

Amb el suport d’Actuellecd, un recurs inestimable en la música nova i d’avantguarda, que treballa, entre d’altres, amb DAME-Music, un segell discogràfic amb seu a Montréal, Canada.

El disc, que forma part de la Collection QB, recull quatre obres per a quartet de corda de Jurg Frëy.

El llançament de l’àlbum String Quartets commemora el 25è aniversari del Quatuor Bozzini, de manera que el públic pot conèixer una part essencial de la seva eclèctica discografia. Es tracta de la reedició d’un enregistrament llegendari produït originalment per Editions Wandelweiser el 2006.

El compositor suís Jurg Frëy és poc conegut al nostre país. La seva música és lenta, reflexiva, amb cops d’arc llargs realitzats amb un so expressiu que dona coherència a tot el cos de la producció musical de Frëy.

En la peça central, Streichquartett, el quartet fa sonar uns repetitius intervals cromàtics descendents sotmesos a una llarga cadena d’acords lents que generen harmònics; un sol tema, el mig to, que els quatre instruments omplen de sonoritat amb molta lentitud. Són insistents els pizzicatos, intercalats amb notes llargues repetitives.

El segon quartet està precedit per altres obres més breus. El díptic Zwei allerletze Sächelchen —Mailied i Vorbei— crida l’atenció per la seva delicada brevetat. Són moviments sorprenents perquè cadascun d’ells dura escassament un minut. Dues idees, dos instants.

El Quatuor Bozzini ofereix una visió moderada del cromatisme suau i insistent, una construcció harmònica innovada per Morton Feldman en els seus darrers anys.

El Quartet de cordes núm. 2 és més ombrívol i les tècniques interpretatives del Quatuor Bozzini són meticuloses, lúcides i perfeccionistes: cada so és tota una experiència. Són músics amb una gran experiència que transmeten a l’oient una immersió completa en la música de Jurg Frëy.

El seu rigorós ofici, que cerca la qualitat per damunt de tot, els ha convertit en un dels conjunts de cambra de música d’avantguarda més importants de l’actualitat.