How does music inhabit the space between two worlds? Jürg Frey confronts this question directly in Je laisse à la nuit son poids d'ombre, a composition for ten musicians that exists in deliberate suspension, refusing the security of solid ground. Commissioned by ensemble]h[iatus, the piece emerged from extended collaboration between composer and performers, particularly in navigating two specific challenges: the distinctive voice of Thomas Lehn's analogue synthesiser and the relationship between two soprano voices.
The work interweaves texts from ancient Japanese haikus with poems by Swiss poet Anne Perrier (1922-2017), a significant figure in the literary landscape of Romandie, the French-speaking region of Switzerland. This juxtaposition of distant poetic traditions creates what Frey describes as an "inner vibration" that subtly influenced the composition's development. The texts hover between states, hinting at transformations and transitions - moments when reality becomes permeable, when certainty gives way to atmospheric suggestion.
Frey's compositional process resists the notion of discovery in favor of sustained doing - a practice where even thinking becomes action, where intuitive decisions accumulate into architecture. "I discover the piece," he explains, noting how connections and relationships emerge only after the work is written, revealing a body of music that exceeds the sum of its notated events. The score balances precise instruction with calculated openness, creating sections where musicians must navigate uncertain terrain, connected to ensemble and composition but responsible for atmosphere and the gentle flow of energies. The instrumentation deliberately avoids a bass voice to ground the composition, leaving the ensemble itself to provide anchoring through tuba, trombone, and low drums. This absence contributes to the music's quality of suspension, its sense of hanging in space rather than resting on foundation. The two soprano voices, after weeks of exploration, found their balance - neither opposed in dramatic conflict nor merged in constant unison, but existing in a more nuanced relationship that embodies the piece's preoccupation with fragility and uncertainty.
Lehn's synthesiser, approached through his background in improvisation, required direct collaboration between composer and performer. The instrument's possibilities opened new sonic territories, integrated not as electronic contrast but as another voice in the ensemble's collective breath. Similarly, Frey composed not merely for instruments but for the personalities of musicians - members of ensemble]h[iatus whose deep experience in both interpretation and improvisation shaped the work's conception.
Founded in 2006 by Martine Altenburger and Lê Quan Ninh, ensemble]h[iatus explores the hiatus between interpreting and improvising, commissioning new works while maintaining connections to contemporary repertoire. This project with Frey offered the group an opportunity to fully engage with the aesthetic world of the Wandelweiser collective, moving into territories of extreme refinement and restraint they had previously approached but never completely inhabited.
The result is music of profound delicacy, where everything is precisely hinted rather than declared, where musicians occasionally leave the safety of written notation to hang suspended in the ensemble's collective sound. Frey's world - exact yet suggestive, architectural yet fragile - finds ideal realization in these fifty-two minutes of suspended animation, music that subversively runs counter to stability while maintaining impeccable formal control.
