The string quartet Quatuor Bozzini perform five Alvin Lucier compositions that share a hyperfocus on the behavior of waves in the performance space on Navigations.

Though most of these compositions have been in Quatuor Bozzini’s repertoire for over a decade, I believe this is their first recording of Alvin Lucier. For comparative listening beyond brief clips of past performances on the quartet’s own website, there’s at least Tapper from String Noise released just last year, Unamuno from EXAUDI, and Navigations from Arditti Quartet and Noël Akchoté. The track sequencing here feels balanced, with the longer beating pieces on either end and the vocal track in the center, separated by tapping pieces.

Disappearances is a sixteen-minute track of clean, sustained soundings with harmonic beatings (or illusion of them) rising from them. Upon reaching a resonance with their instruments, each other, and/or the room, the overtone pulse alternately quickens and slows — buzzing, humming, singing — occasionally, true to the title, disappearing, I imagine from some canceling synthesis trick or perhaps a interruptive shifting harmonic configuration similar to the other pieces. The similarly durative, sustained, and beating Navigations seems multiphonically-played with a faint fluting accenting the disappearances. The ear might hear the rotating matrix of four tones and miniscule differences in pitch, decreasing volume, and decreasing tempo through the track, intended to draw attention to the room. The relatively brief Unamuno is another rearranging pattern of four tones with attention to performer placement in space; usually performed with voice, here it is mixed string and voice. Tapper uses the butt of the bow against the body of the instrument to collect information about the room as the performer walks the space, utilizing different tempos, forces, and parts of the body. In making it a group performance, the ear feels distracted from the character of the room itself towards the relative space of the performers and their overt polyrhythm, which is an interesting shift in perception. Representing the performance space in such a way, through multiple facets, requires a tenuous synergy from composers, performers, and recording and sound engineers; this recording achieves that inclusivity of the fifth instrument of the quartet.