Three Descriptions of Place and Movement is Harrison’s first string quartet, but even this seemingly facile descriptor loses all stability when the third movement emerges, essentially a triple quartet with the astonishingly gifted Quatuor Bozzini overdubbing all parts. They’re no strangers to Harrison’s work, having performed his epic piano quintet with Mark Knoop several years ago, and Three Descriptions is equally ambitious, lasting an hour. Its form involves something approaching a radical take on theme and variation in that a brief opening movement, containing much of the work’s material in embryonic form, is followed by two extended explorative deconstructions and re-assimilations. While the album should be heard in order, the easiest point of entry is the middle movement, with the motives paired off and the texture relatively sparse, all in a hushed dynamic. Like Jason’s section of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, relative syntactic simplicity means that the musical argument can be deduced, affording easier access to the rest. Notions of tonality, modality and even of center blur but never completely disappear, as with the boldly etched fifths, fourths, and thirds beginning at 14:43 of the second movement. Just as quickly though, these are subsumed only to return, altered, at 20:59.

Harrison’s take on repetition is more than complex, and violinist Sarah Saviet executes each twist and turn with stunning clarity and invention. Listen, just to cite one example, to her constantly morphing dyad repeated from 19:50 to 20:35 of the 50-minute solo violin piece A Coiled Form. I’m reminded of those early 1990s glitch albums on which broken CD players blur form and structure via similarly fractured repetitions. In an interview on Another Timbre’s site, Harrison speaks of these repetitions as multifaceted, implying a collaborative composer/performer relationship in developing them and expanding the work from an initial five minutes to its present length. Again, as in the string quartet, thematic material exits only to return but in a fashion unpredictable on first listening. Are those arpeggiations at 36:00 related to the minuscule glitchy arc at 20:35? Are the succeeding major-sounding sonorities merely rhythmically similar extensions, and is the glassy timbre really the music’s unifying factor?

In the end, as might be expected with such large forms, familiarity is only achieved through these skewed repetitions. Harrison’s is a music of recurrence in its subtlest manifestation, a kind of static reappraisal of idea and context that nevertheless function in stark tandem. All matters of tonal procedure and whatever its opposite might be become subservient to the seamless blending of form and structure. Beyond even this duality resides a soundworld of staggering beauty, one inhabited completely by Saviet and by Quatuor Bozzini. They traverse each gesture with such obvious commitment that it becomes a portal of discovery, a door opening onto music of seemingly infinite significance and incalculable reward.

Composer Bryn Harrison writes about temporal organization and experience in music. Coauthored with Richard Glover and Jennie Gottschalk in a collaborative spirit, Being Time (Bloomsbury, 2018) examines the experiences of the three authors listening to music built in different time spans, from the longest works of Morton Feldman to micro music. Harrison explores these concerns in his own music, particularly subtle variations over significant durations. Three Descriptions of Place and Movement, his first string quartet, written for Quatuor Bozzini and recorded for Huddersfield, is both intricately organized and imposing in structure. At over an hour long, it is an opportunity to see Harrison’s vision writ large.

Feldman is an obvious touchstone for pervasively slow music over a long duration, and Harrison’s work certainly has echoes of Feldman, but Three Descriptions of Place and Movement also departs from Feldman’s aesthetic in both its surface and structuring. The music is populated by changes in bowing techniques, mini-crescendos and just as quick returns to piano, and a plethora of articulations. It challenges the listener’s attention to detail by constantly shifting between these various techniques. What starts as a principal texture may shift to accompaniment, counterpoint, or a mixture of roles. Harrison says that he uses shapes like a wrapped double helix in Opening, to organize material so that one constantly hears it from different vantage points.

Each successive movement is longer, which plays with perception as well. The movement titles — Opening, Clearing, and Burrow are each meant in two senses: the place and movement of the title. Thus, a musical opening may introduce material that brings one into the piece’s orbit; an opening also can be of a door, or a mind. Harrison suggests similar dualities for Clearing and Burrow. When each movement’s central process has been worked out, it ends with surprising suddenness.

The Bozzini Quartet are a perfect ensemble for the challenges of Harrison’s score, its demanding specificity of expression, dynamics, and rhythm. Cascading entrances and myriad bowing techniques and articulations are delivered crisply, with abundant clarity. The work’s sinuous chromaticism is rendered with admirably spot-on tuning.

Three Descriptions of Place and Movement is Harrison’s most successful and distinctive work to date. Once again, Huddersfield Contemporary Records presents a risk taking artist in the best possible sound and performance conditions. Recommended.