Slow long-form minimalism on Circular Music Ext. No 1 / No 2 / Ext. No 2 (INSUB. RECORDS), composed by Jürg Frey and “adapted” by the small ensemble who are playing it on their largely acoustic instruments…there’s d’incise, plus Clara Lévy, Victor Guaita, Michaël Liberg, Yannick Guédon and others, and it’s a combination of strings, voices, accordion, and theremin being used to produce these lengthy tones, emerging like sighs of holy contemplation or measured breaths from a sleeping animal
I think this album is excerpted from two much longer compositional works by Frey, Circular Music and Extended Circular Music, which he’s been working on since 2011. I get lost very easily when this kind of music is explained to me, but from what I can gather it’s mostly about the structure and the division into parts. There may also be a shared harmonic series among these discrete compositions. All of this smacks of conceptual rigour and mental discipline; and Jürg Frey is a member of the Wandelweiser Group, whose ultra-minimal and dry cerebral output has divided listeners, including this one. At one time I thought I was beginning to find a way in to understand it, but today is not one of those days. However, it’s quite possible that Frey himself was not personally involved in directing this particular performance, and when the group say the work has been “adapted”, that statement may be open to interpretation, especially since there’s zero information about the process given here.
From experts more familiar with Frey, I gather Circular Music was originally composed for solo piano, in which case “rethinking” it for a small ensemble of strings and voices and other instruments either represents a very bold move, or could be considered taking one too many liberties with the score. All I can say today is that I found this turgid release supremely boring; the structure we’re supposed to admire is far from evident, the piece never reaches any kind of resolution, and there are zero moments of musical sublimation along the way. (12/09/2023)