The Squid's Ear Magazine


Frey, Jurg  (performed by Cristian Alvear): Guitarist, Alone (Another Timbre)

A double CD featuring all of Wandelweiser composer Jurg Frey's music for solo acoustic guitar, beautifully interpreted by the Chilean guitarist Cristian Alvear, including a new piece written specially for Cristian Alvear; beautifully unfolding, concentrative music.
 

Price: $26.95


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product information:

Personnel:



Jurg Frey-composer

Cristian Alvear-guitar


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Label: Another Timbre
Catalog ID: at94x2
Squidco Product Code: 22140

Format: 2 CDs
Condition: New
Released: 2016
Country: UK
Packaging: Cardboard box with slide in CD sleeves
Recorded by Alfonso Perez.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Not one for the impatient listener, this softly entrancing double-disc set contains all the solo guitar music by the Swiss composer Jürg Frey - and that means an awful lot of silence and not a huge number of notes. The first piece, Abendlied, contains exactly 10 notes in two minutes, and that's comparatively hectic. Frey is master of exquisite slow-fi; as a Wandelweiser artist, he considers quietness to be as expressive as noise, and the way a note decays as crucial as how it is struck. Apparently in preparing for this recording, guitarist Cristián Alvear worked to finesse the art of making no noise whatsoever as his hands moved over the instrument while playing - these things matter in music that's stripped back to absolute essentials. His attention to detail pays off, and he really sinks into the hypnotic pacing. There's a sense of thoughts being worked out in real time, of musical statements being made, pondered and responded to without an iota of hurry."-Kate Molleson, The Guardian



"Decades of heavily amplified popular music have ingrained the idea of the guitar as a loud, swaggering vehicle of individualism at its most potent - an image that extends from rock and blues to the unvarnished grit of flamenco and folk singers. The title of Another Timbre's new album of Jürg Frey's music, guitarist, alone, carries a similar connotation of outspoken defiance.

It's easy to forget the reason why the guitar is so often amplified in the first place. Without supporting technology, the guitar is a frail-voiced instrument. The plucked notes decay quickly, the dynamic range struggles to reach past what other musicians would consider mezzo forte, sustain and resonance is limited to a few natural harmonics on the lowest strings. Frey's writing for guitar takes precisely the opposite route almost every other composer would follow, eschewing continuous flows of notes, strummed chords and secure bass. On these two CDs, he demands the instrument be presented at its weakest, unaccompanied, its technical shortcomings mercilessly exposed.

Frey almost exclusively demands the guitar play single, unsupported notes, only occasionally allowing harmonies to appear. At first, it would seem that we have a situation similar to that of Michael Pisaro's Mind is Moving IX for solo electric guitarist, discussed here recently: a series of isolated incidents, exquisitely timed. With a classical acoustic guitar, such an approach becomes almost impossible. The sounds are too faint and fleeting to significantly establish their presence.

Unlike some of Frey's more recent, "figurative" music, guitarist, alone leaves us back in the position of being able only to suddenly listen. relikt, from 1987, works simply by juxtaposing one note against another, in succession. It's a work of tremendous restraint, both in composition and interpretation, setting sound against silence in a carefully maintained equilibrium.

Cristián Alvear's playing is a beautiful study in concentration throughout the collection. There are no extended techniques called for here, and so he produces each sound cleanly and clearly, with extraneous noise on the strings, neck or body of the instrument (that "authentic" grit of folk music) almost entirely eliminated even when the music is near silent. At the same time, the playing and recording never sounds so polished as to be sterile. Tiny, inevitable incidents in the sound and the background give the music a physical presence. For wen 23 Alvear stretches the piece out to half an hour, a mere dozen or so notes suspended on a sea of silence. (I'm not Joseph II so I'm not going to count them.)

The most recent work is the title piece, from 2014. It shares a title and a style close to that of his two works titled Pianist, Alone. The title now seems more plaintive than defiant. Contrasted with the piano, the thinness of the guitar's sound suggests a less certain, more tenuous narrative behind the musical meandering. The guitar is a private, intimate instrument.

The 50 Sächelchen from 1989 take up the entirety of the other disc. These bagatelles, arranged in alphabetical order, imply a playfulness that might seem at odds with Frey's typically hushed aesthetic. Funnily enough, this is exactly the case. These brief, sometimes very brief, pieces move from closely-studied miniatures to jaunty little stings (Jürg Frey ringtones?) and even snatches of music that are fast and even, as much as it is possible, loud. But only for a little while, now and then."-Ben Harper, Boring Like a Drill


Artist Biographies

"Jürg Frey was born in 1953 in Aarau, Switzerland. Following his musical education at the Concervatoire de Musique de Genève, he turned to a career as a clarinetist, but his activities as composer soon came to the foreground. Frey developed his own language as a composer and sound artist with the creation of wide, quiet sound spaces. His work is marked by an elementary non-extravagence of sound, a sensibilty for the qualities of the material, and precision of compositional approach. His compositions sometimes bypass instrumentation and duration altogether and touch on aspects of sound art. He has worked with compositional series, as well as with language and text. Some of these activities appear in small editions or as artist's books as individual items and small editions (Edition Howeg, Zurich; weiss kunstbewegung, Berlin; complice, Berlin). His music and recordings are published by Edition Wandelweiser. Frey has been invited to workshops as visiting composer and for composer portraits at the Universität der Künste Berlin, the Universität Dortmund and several times at Northwestern University and CalArts. Some of the other places his work has developed are the concerts at the Kunstraum Düsseldorf, the Wandelweiser-in-Residence-Veranstaltungen in Vienna, the Ny music concerts in Boras (Sweden), the cooperation with Cologne pianist John McAlpine, the Bozzini Quartet (Montréal), QO-2 (Bruxelles), Die Maulwerker, incidental music, as well as the regular stays in Berlin (where during the last years many of his compositions were premiered). Frey is a member of the Wandelweiser Komponisten Ensemble which has presented concerts for more than 15 years in Europe, North America and Japan. Frey also organizes the concert series moments musicaux aarau as a forum for contemporary music."

-Other Minds (http://www.otherminds.org/shtml/Frey.shtml)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Chilean musician dedicated to the performance, premiere and recording of new music. He serves as co-curator of the Experimental Music Festival Relincha, in Valdivia, Chile.

Since the beginning of his career he has been constantly performing in the main auditoriums and concert halls of his country, as well as international festivals and concert venues. In recent years he has concentrated its efforts in performing educational concerts in rural areas of the Los Lagos region, in Southern Chile.

His work has been published by edition wandelweiser records (germany), irritable hedgehog (usa), cathnor (uk), rhizome.S (france), potlatch (france), 1000fŸssler (germany), lengua de lava (mexico), caduc (canada), melange editions (japan), b-boim records (austria) and erstclass (usa)."

-Cristian Alvear Website (http://www.cristianalvear.com/p/bioeng.html)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



CD 1



1. 50 Sachelchen 79:30 CD 2



1. Relikt 9:38

2. Wen 23 32:21

3. Guitarist, Alone 33:28

Related Categories of Interest:


Compositional Forms
Guitarists, &c.
Solo Artist Recordings
New in Compositional Music

Search for other titles on the label:
Another Timbre.


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