Catherine Lamb: interius/exterius [Greyfade]. The most assured and balanced composition by Lamb to date, interius/exterius was composed in dialogue with the New York based Ghost Ensemble in 2022 and was recorded by them last year. It’s an all-acoustic piece for an ensemble of nine musicians, in which the strings are the dominant presence: viola, cello and two five-string double basses. As usual for Lamb, just intonation and its consequent microtonality form the basis for the piece, guiding the musicians to play specific pitches on the spectrum of overtones above a notional fundamental tone of 10 Hertz. The piece opens with a dense, dark thicket of interwoven (but not tangled) harmonies, with a complexity reminiscent of a La Monte Young drone. The rough and granular texture of bowed low strings are interleaved with pitches played on flute, oboe and accordion, but these instruments are subsumbed into the overall texture and work on the ear in the manner of overtones and beating frequencies, a sort of aural leavening. Contrast is provided by hammered dulcimer, echoed by a harp; with slow melody of single tones these two combine to function as a guide through the sonic labyrinth, resonating or contrasting with the aggregate of pitches.
The piece is structured to loosely alternate between compatible and incompatible harmonic intervals, hence the distinction of inward and outward movement reflected in the title; it provides a faint but ever-present sense of equilibrium as the musical fabric expands and contracts, between tension and rest. Throughout the work’s six movements, the overall balance moves steadily towards resolving into simpler, clearer harmonies with fewer pitches, each succeeding statement more succinct. The coda is all single-voice counterpoint, as dulcimer and harp alternate in solo. interius/exterius is unmistakably a Catherine Lamb composition, yet it’s the piece I’ve heard which most clearly reflects her study with James Tenney, as a clear organisational method behind the piece can be inferred from listening, even if it can’t be readily explained. The Ghost musicians do an excellent job of using subtleties of timbre to distinguish the material, the winds enhancing certain attributes of the strings, harp and dulcimer differentiated by attack.
Jürg Frey: Longing Landscape [Another Timbre]. Three recent works by Frey, also benefitting from close work with an ensemble – in this case the Prague Quiet Music Collective. The first two pieces can be read as Frey pushing forwards into less certain territory: The sound never has walls combines clarinet, electric guitar, violin and double bass in a way which consciously fails to blend the disparate sounds. Although everything’s within the usual apparently quiescent atmosphere of slow pacing and soft dynamics, the piece becomes increasingly fragmented and discordant, as the guitar becomes jarringly hooked on repeating notes in crescendo. The Prague Quiet Musicians succeed in making each each of their contributions appear to cover a wide dynamic range. For Fleetingness, composed last year, they’re joined by members of asamisimasa, with the enlarged ensemble creating a strange type of Klangfarbenmelodie where small, strange sounds are juxtaposed in unusual ways with no apparent direction, set amongst detailed percussion work. The title piece is comparatively normal, with the same musicians heard on the opening track now pulling together into a moody, sinuously uncoiling melodic line. Hearing all three, it feels like Frey is reaching out into yet another direction on his musical progress, but hasn’t quite arrived yet.
