Composer, alone is a 3-disc collection of twelve solo piano pieces by Swiss composer (and clarinetist) Jürg Frey, composed between 1990 and 2024, all performed by Dutch pianist-composer Reinier van Houdt. Frey and van Houdt have cultivated a close rapport, and this album is their third collaboration, following l’air, l’instant – deux pianos (elsewhere, 2020), with Fellow Dutch pianist Dante Boom, and the triple album lieues d’ombres (elsewhere, 2022). The album was recorded at the Muziekcentrum van de Omroep (MCO) in Hilversum (where lieues d’ombres was recorded) over three days in September 2024, in the presence of Frey. Frey also contributed the watercolor cover artwork.
The album traces Frey’s journey over the past thirty-five years as he explores his voice as a composer through the piano works, but it is structured in a non-chronological order to enable a lively dialogue between the pieces and
