While definitely more transparent and smoother around the edges than this composer’s other recent recording, Tam Lin, this reading by Quatuor Bozzini of Martin Arnold’s work is equally brilliant, articulating his amblingly weightless melodies with clean precision. The sober and delicate performance allows Arnold’s unique talents as a string composer to speak with utter clarity, coaxing subtly exotic resonances from the instruments without foregrounding conspicuous extended techniques.
The four works presented here are paradoxically richly hued in their evocation of a variety of instruments—lute, hurdy gurdy, viols, reeds—while still remaining somehow elusive and monochromatic. The hushed opener, contact; vault, is a hovering string of osseous whispers, made from gently percussive plucking, breathy col legno tratto, and limpid harmonics. Slew & Hop, for only viola and cello, hints timbrally and harmonically at folk and Renaissance musics, yet dangles in Arnold’s signature fragmented stasis. The opaque chromaticism of Liquidambars belies the far more translucent instrumental tone occurring throughout. The titular piece Aberrare (Casting) resides in Arnold’s hollow, open-harmonic world, accentuated by the broad warm tones of the ensemble.
Perhaps the aforementioned paradox of colour can be attributed to the sensitivity of Quatuor Bozzini, which is more than well-acquainted with a diverse range of new chamber composition. Wisely, they steer clear of instilling a false sense of progression, and avoid imposing unnecessarily effusive phrasing. Instead, they allow the music to breathe and to linger, rather stubbornly, in its long and sufficiently hypnotic moments.
Nick Storring is a Toronto-based composer, musician, and writer, and a contributing editor to Musicworks. His music has been presented and performed by the Esprit Orchestra, Eve Egoyan, Quatuor Bozzini, Beijing’s Musicacoustica Festival, and Vancouver New Music. An avid collaborator, Storring has composed for films by Terrance Odette, Ingrid Veninger and, in collaboration with Dafydd Hughes, for the National Film Board’s award-winning Web documentary High Rise: Universe Within (2015), directed by Katerina Cizek. He’s also scored productions by Litmus Theatre and MT Space, worked with celebrated choreographers Yvonne Ng, Marie Josée Chartier, Brandy Leary, and Deepti Gupta, and created music for “ambient gaming environment” Tentacle, which was mounted at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2011. Storring’s writing has appeared in Exclaim!, The Wire, and AUX.tv. He also contributed liner notes to Alga Marghen’s reissue of the ’60s band Intersystems’ entire recorded output, as well as RVNG Intl.’s box of early psych trio Syrinx’s reissues and previously unreleased material Tumblers from the Vault.