Tag: Quatuor Bozzini

CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard and Quatuor Bozzini – Colliding Bubbles: Surface Tension and Release (CD Review))

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard and Quatuor Bozzini – Colliding Bubbles: Surface Tension and Release (Important)

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard is a composer based in Copenhagen. On his latest EP he joins forces with the premiere Canadian string quartet for new music, Quatuor Bozzini, to create a piece that deals with the perception of bubbles replicating the human experience. In addition to the harmonics played by the strings, the players are required to play harmonicas at the same time. At first blush, this might sound like a gimmick, but the conception of the piece as instability and friction emerging from continuous sound, like bubbles colliding in space and, concurrently, the often tense unpredictability of the human experience, makes these choices instead seem organic and well-considered. As the piece unfolds, the register of the pitch material makes a slow decline from the stratosphere to the ground floor with a simultaneous long decrescendo.  The quartet are masterful musicians, unfazed by the challenge of playing long bowings and long-breathed harmonica chords simultaneously. The resulting sound world is shimmering, liquescent, and surprising in its occasional metaphoric bubbles popping.

  • Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Bracing Change 2 on NMC (CD Review)

Bracing Change 2

Piatti Quartet, Heath Quartet, Quatuor Bozzini

NMC Recordings

 

The first Bracing Change recording dates from 2017, when Wigmore Hall decided to use the moniker as the title for a series of string commissions. Three string quartets play on Bracing Change 2, another collection of commissions by the organization.

 

The Piatti Quartet plays Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Contusions.” It begins with sforzando punctuations of a modal ostinato, gradually picking up steam, accumulating material, and more dissonant harmonies along the way. An emphatic and knotty passage of counterpoint marks the end of the first large section, after which there are viola and cello solos trading angular melodies. The upper voices join, creating a duo cadenza. A new ostinato, this one more emphatic and motoric in feel, accompanies snatches from the various solos. Full-throated tremolandos lead into the final section, a suddenly subdued passage of a third type of repeated patterning. The swells from the opening, this time forte, join the rest of the material to create a sense both of return and greater intensity. A final melody in the cello is accompanied by harmonics and tremolandos, and the chords from the piece’s opening, this time subdued. A brash vertical ends the piece conclusively.

 

Quatuor Bozzini plays Paul Newland’s “Difference is Everywhere,” which combines slow-moving mixed interval chords with sustained single notes at a soft dynamic. Bozzini are some of the best exponents of the Wandelweiser Collective, so this is right in their wheelhouse. Newland’s music may adopt Wandelweiser signatures, but “Difference is Everywhere” is a distinctive and attractive piece.

 

Helen Grime’s String Quartet No. 2 is a major work in her catalogue. The Heath Quartet’s rendition is detailed in terms of articulations, special techniques, and dynamics. The first movement combines tremolandos and mixed interval chords. Gradually these build in dynamic, replaced by quick-paced lines juxtaposed with pizzicatos. A syncopated gesture asserts itself as a principal motif, which is followed by a soft interlude of trills versus sustained notes. Fleet forte scalar passages create a vigorous coda. The second movement also features pizzicatos and the syncopated gesture found in the first. The latter is played fortissimo and surrounded by glissandos. A doleful melody, sliding between pitches, begins the final section in which previous motifs are played in a long decrescendo to a hushed close. The third movement begins with a near-continuation, with intricate harmonies accompanying a brisk violin solo. Verticals continue on their own, and the sliding melody from the second movement makes an altered reappearance with pizzicato punctuations. Glissandos and trills build a hive of dissonance, its buildup then replaced by undulating arpeggios. Swelling harmonies move from mixed interval chords to ones that orient the piece closer to minor. A long decrescendo of fragments of melody and sustained chords completes the movement, and the piece. The quartet is a worthy successor to Grime’s Quartet No. 1.

 

Bracing Changes 2 lives up to its title, but there is a significant amount of variety among the pieces. It is one of my favorite releases of 2023.

 

Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?

Bozzini Quartet plays Bryn Harrison (CD Review)

Bryn Harrison

Three Descriptions of Place and Movement

Quatuor Bozzini

Huddersfield Contemporary Records, 2022

 

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.

 

  • Christian Carey

 

 

by Christian Carey