Jürg Frey: String Trio

2023 was always going to be a landmark year for the esteemed Swiss clarinetist and composer Jürg Frey. His 70th birthday was in May and, to celebrate it, the renowned Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival allocated three slots to Frey's music on the festival's second Saturday. In addition, String Trio became the third Frei album released in 2023, following in the footsteps of Continuité, fragilité, resonance (Elsewhere), recorded in August 2022 by a string quartet plus four saxophones, and Circular Music Ext. No. 1 / No. 2 / Ext. No. 2. (Insub), recorded in February 2023 by a variety of groupings (review: Jürg Frey: Circular Music Ext. no. 1 / no. 2 / Ext. no. 2.).

Compared to those two pieces, String Trio sounds very different as it is played on violin, viola and cello, by Apartment House, throughout its forty-seven minutes. The piece was originally written as a commission from the Concertgebouw Brugge and was premiered by the Goeyvaerts Trio at the 2019 SLOW Festival. Frey always had the feeling that the piece had not yet arrived at its final destination. When it was planned to have Apartment House record the piece, he worked some more on it—not the first time that he has re-worked a supposedly finished piece.

The end result more than justifies Frey's decision, as the piece sounds coherent and thought through, even though Frey says he uses no system when composing. For instance, although Anton Lukoszevieze's cello plays the same E note for most of the first nine minutes, it never becomes tiresome because it acts as a foundation over which Mira Benjamin's violin and Bridget Carey's viola sound free and easy. Throughout the piece, Frey introduces some beguiling melodic passages; perhaps the most moving of these comes towards the end, its sombre melancholy commanding attention. In its entirety, this is one of those pieces which often has to be repeated as soon as it is over. Yes, Frey continues to go from strength to strength...