Alfred Zimmerlin, Carmina Quartett, Aequatuor, Aria Quartett

Euridice was the ECM debut of the Swiss composer Alfred Zimmerlin, born in 1955 and first known internationally as an improvising cellist. It gathers three chamber works: his two string quartets and, between them, Euridice singt, a 35-minute scene for soprano, oboe, cello, piano and tape. The Orpheus myth is retold from Eurydice's side, with her death heard as the trigger for Orpheus's awakening as an artist.

Zimmerlin's catalogue runs to more than 70 works, including solo pieces, music with live electronics and work for radio and film. The libretto of Euridice singt is by Raphael Urweider, a Swiss poet who also works as a rapper and free improviser. The piece was premiered at the Lucerne Festival in 2005 and recorded in October 2007 at the Kultur- & Kongresshaus Aarau by Æquatuor: soprano Sylvia Nopper, oboist Matthias Arter, cellist Tobias Moster and pianist Ingrid Karlen. The quartets were recorded in August 2006 at Radio Studio DRS in Zürich, the Second by the Carmina Quartett and the First by the Aria Quartett. Manfred Eicher produced.

Euridice singt opens with the snakebite that kills Euridice, carried by the tape. The oboe stands for Orpheus's grief and moves between clean tones and multiphonics over noise, piano and pizzicato. The soprano's Euridice begins as a near-ghost, her long lines accompanied very quietly until the noisy outside world breaks in again, with rap and a small chorus woven in. The Second Quartet, subtitled mit kleinen Wellen an jedem Blattrand (wie eines Windes Lächeln), is all fine, quick brushwork. The First starts from a dense mass and opens into slower, almost symphonic passages before closing on pizzicati.

ECM describes Zimmerlin's aesthetic as an elastic integration of heterogeneous materials, with room for cantabile, prepared instruments, musique concrète and even rap. In the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Peter Hagmann found the Æquatuor reading gripping and singled out Arter and Nopper. Benjamin Herzog of Musik & Theater praised the Carmina Quartett's sensitivity to sound in a Second Quartet whose episodes verge on the theatrical. Tyran Grillo of ECM Reviews called the album "pristine, artfully performed" and heard in its unforced flow the experience of an improviser.

This is the CD edition, ECM New Series 2045, first released in May 2009, with booklet notes by Zimmerlin and Thomas Meyer.