Jürg Frey I Listened to the Wind
There are things – the leaves of a tree, the seconds of our lives, the slates on a warehouse roof – that are as numerous as droplets in ‘a rain as soft as a mist’, to quote Jürg Frey’s text for his I listened to the wind again, which he wrote for the LCMS festival of 2017.
These are the infinities of this world, and generally they pass us by, because they are everywhere, or because we have not the focus to be still and observe each particular.
Frey may teach us that focus.
It may be a matter, listening to this small richness of instruments (clarinet, string trio and percussion) that joins the voice, of sensing how a note on the viola differs from the same note played on the violin, or to how an interval on these two instruments changes when they exchange notes.
It may be a matter of recognizing how a word, joining the soft rain of instrumental sounds, may cause them to change, even bring them into alignment with it, or expressive conformity.
It may be a matter of feeling how the colour and the texture of the ensemble shift, and return, and do not return.
It may be a matter of experiencing sound from the inside, existing in the air we breathe, and from the outside, placed over there, where the musician is, just as the words seem to move from inside (in English) to outside (in French).
It may be a matter of weighing one voice against another, in the music and again in the text, into which Frey inserts quotations from two French Swiss poets, Gustave Roud and Pierre Chappuis, from the Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi, and finally from the Lebanese-U.S. poet-painter Etel Adnan.
If having different accents, all speak with the same voice. Bai Juyi again gives us innumerability, of grass, and grief. (Paul Griffiths)
Included in the Best Contemporary Classical of 2021
daily.bandcamp.com/best-of-2021/the-best-contemporary-classical-of-2021
Sequenza 21's Best of 2021 Recordings:
https://www.sequenza21.com/2021/12/best-of-2021-new-experimental-recordings/
Best of 2021: New/Experimental Recordings
Louth Contemporary Music Society has released a treasure trove of recordings via their Bandcamp site this year. This new recording of Jürg Frey’s I Listened to the Wind Again, for soprano, clarinet, strings, and percussion, is a standout among chamber releases of new music this year. Frey sets fragmentary quotations from French-Swiss poets Gustave Roud and Pierre Chappuis, Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi, and Lebanese-U.S. poet-painter Etel Adnan. The gentle declamation of the text is exquisitely rendered by Hélène Fauchère. The rest of the ensemble undertakes similarly aphoristic lines, slowly and softly, which gradually thread together into an achingly beautiful web of layered interplay. I Listened to the Wind is a captivating listen.
Jürg Frey’s I Listened to the Wind Again, "a 45-min piece... seems to trace the evolution of his compositional voice in microcosm.Frey keeps adding expressivity to his once spare music, gesturing towards but never approaching melodrama." Ben Harper Boring like a Drill. December 2021
www.cookylamoo.com/boringlikeadrill/2021/12/words-as-music-jurg-frey-samuel-beckett-john-tilbury.html
A truly beautiful work that embodies care and curiosity, and nurtures subtlety of perception
Julian Crowley The Wire, January 2022.
The work was commissioned by the Louth Contemporary Music Society for a 2017 performance, and this new reading is astonishing, building from a series of often frictive, short lines that patiently begin to form a gorgeous melodic sequence over time while only heightening the weft and density of his translucent timbre.
The Best Contemporary Classical on Bandcamp: October 2021
By Peter Margasak
daily.bandcamp.com/best-contemporary-classical/the-best-contemporary-classical-on-bandcamp-october-2021