Quatuor Bozzini

Sens(e) Absence

Label: Collection QB Country: Canada

"Since its founding in 1999 the Bozzini Quartet has presented new, contemporary, experimental and classical music and has explored with equal eagerness the possibilities of traditional concerts and the ones of avant-garde events. To date, it has commissioned some hundred works and has premiered over one hundred and fifty. The group distinguishes itself through its specific, carefully considered repertoire and its distinct style of playing that pays much attention to details. Its programming seeks to engender productive conversation between strong (if sometimes subtle) creative voices, regardless of their current notoriety or popularity. This utterly contemporary new music ensemble makes its home within an extremely vibrant new music scene, and it is literally carried away by the music it chooses to play. Its performances are brilliant, precise and always inspiring."-Dame

About Sens(e) Absence:

Sens(e) Absence was premiered by the Bozzini Quartet at Berlin's Ballhaus Naunynstraße on the same program as the quartet by Ernstalbrecht Stiebler that shares this disk. Composing for strings has always been, for me, a process of discovery, with their infinite tuning possibilities that produce subtle harmonies and timbres of great nuance and beauty. I imagined, while composing it, space being both temporal and architectural where voices are heard from other dimensions. These considerations influenced the unusual tuning system I devised, which produces a great variety of close and wide intervals with natural harmonics. The music's structure is therefore like inhabiting a building whose rooms always seem different as light changes throughout the day and through the seasons. It is with this in mind that the music was the source for a sound and light installation that occupied the Hans Otte Raum at the Neues Museum Weserberg Bremen: as Bremen's autumn and winter daylight diminished outside, the Hans Otte Raum inside was suffused in a constant rotation of light created by Paul Tzanetopoulos. Over the course of three months the music gradually reduced to one percent of that which is heard here."-Daniel Rothman

Sehr langsam "Very slow" - a tempo indication, as well as the title of this piece. It characterizes the music itself, asking the listener for patience, for calm concentration, and for abandoning himself to the sound. This sound extends into the room, finding the listener-and it might also trigger a resonance in that inner room everybody finds within himself (Kafka), a place where the listener communicates with the inside of the sound, its quality, its spectrum of partial tones, and its microtones as they give their emphasis and differentiation to the sound colour. These sounds are soft-an emotional forte would sever the act of listening in this microtonal sound space, as if by a glaring spotlight. The experience of this particular space is energized, stimulated and invigorated by the sound. A friend once said that this piece has many endings, in the sense that it is continuously fading away-which is true. In these moments, the individual energy of the composed music diminishes, as it were. There, we experience the silence into which this music moves in ever renewed attempts. In order to enhance the musical experience of this piece, it is suggested to listen to it at a reduced volume level."-Ernstalbrecht Stiebler