Harrison / Quatuor Bozzini Three Descriptions CD

Following the success of their 2017-18 collaboration (Bozzini+, Piano Quintet, HCR19), the Bozzini Quartet is reunited with composer Bryn Harrison for Harrison's fi-rst string quartet, the three-movement, hour-long Three Descriptions of Place and Movement (2021). A fi-rst string quartet is a landmark moment for any composer, but Harrison's feels like a particularly signi-ficant arrival: the homogenous instrumentation is ideally suited to the disorienting labyrinthine structures, intricate repetitions, and extended durations that have characterized much of his recent work. The title's three 'descriptions' are clarifi-ed in the names of the movements. Opening, clearing, and burrow-all doubly verbs and nouns-are each embedded with simultaneous motion and stasis. Opening, an unfolding, widening, growing from a single point, as well as the aperture, the crevice, the window that frames the perception of space. Clearing, a kind of purging or scrubbing of materials down to their barren core, or a wide empty space, -at and nondescript, de-fined by the negative. And burrow, to carve deeper, to dig into, to bury oneself completely, or an underground cocoon, warm, enveloping, home.