I was originally planning to write this review on a train journey the day after the concert, but James Weeks’s six weatherworld quartets created such a profound stillness inside me that I want to write while I can hold the moment, rather than risk losing it to the cacophony of LNER.

Tonight’s MUSICON concert performed by the Canadian Quatuor Bozzini was the world premiere of these six quartets, which, James explained beforehand, were written to explore a sense of immersion in the outdoors and to question how much time we really spend listening when we’re in nature.

To my ears and memories, weatherworld was a very British climate, pervaded by damp, drizzle, dripping water. the smell of wet soil and the dense heaviness of rainsoaked air. The quartets also provoked very specific (but good) memories to me of a wet camping trip in the New Forest in my teens: dark, intense green of the wet woods under the comforting shelter of the tree canopy and I imagine other people in the audience had equally strong but perhaps very different pictures in their minds.

The first quartet was dominated by a gentle tapping on the bodies of the instruments, in a controlled randomness that evoked the hypnotic sound of rain on a roof, or on a tent, in the dead of night, coming and going but never quite stopping, some drops more persistent than others.

This tapping effect reappeared at other times during the quartets. Weeks makes use of extensive special effects throughout the cycle – whispery sounds from a bow barely making contact with the strings; overtones and harmonics; a bow or a finger lightly brushed across the soundbox or the string and punctuated by the occasional pitched pizzicato or a sustained bowed note and all of it barely a notch above silence. We had to strain every muscle to listen, hardly daring to move, and this need for deep concentration contributed to the effect of the music.

In his opening comments, James warned us that the music was very quiet and that it was being recorded and asked that we all be particularly careful about phones and coughing. Fortunately there were no phones, but total silence was not going to happen. However, I found myself reflecting that we’re also part of nature, not just observers; no matter how quiet and still our surroundings, we still hear our own breathing, our pulse and our tiniest movements so utter silence would have been unworldly as well as impossible (although I also irreverently thought that a rustling puffer coat near me was perhaps a little too evocative of being out in the rain).

The world that Weeks creates is one of plants, earth and weather – possibly a few insects but no birds or animals – and the effect was heightened by the use of plants in quartets 4 and 6, with the upper three instruments brushing cypress sprigs and fronds of ferns across their strings. These created a delicate and brittle syncopated effect in the 4th quartet and a lively strumming in the last.

There were shafts of light and sunshine too. The third quartet began with the gleam of near-soundless bowing; an airy expanse, intensified by high, pure harmonics (similar to the effect of singing wine glasses). To me, this was a hot summer day in a big landscape of rustling grasses and again, very specific places came to mind. The fourth quartet began with a beguiling tremolo effect that brought new depth to the music, added to later by a sustained viola note in the midst of the texture: the programme notes said that we were at ‘ground level, among trembling foliage in spotting rain’ and there was definitely earthiness here.

The final quartet began with energetic strumming (I think these were the cypress sprigs) and when this gave way to sparks of pizzicato there was a fresh, bright stillness in the air. The cycle ended with the loudest music of the cycle from brightly shimmering sustained notes. There were times during the evening when I was tempted to shut my eyes and let the sounds take over, but I was also fascinated by watching the players and never more so than in the closing minutes when I was mesmerised by Isabelle Bozzini’s gently swinging cello as she switched between bowing the strings and the sound box.

In trying to describe weatherworld quartets, I hope I haven’t given the impression that it was ambient noise and special effects for nothing could be further from the truth. Each miniature – they were all about ten minutes long – was thoughtfully constructed and paced, with a logical development and line. Most importantly, I came away feeling that I had been changed by what I heard and that seems to me a pretty good working definition of what music is and what it’s for.

Main image: Quatuor Bozzini: Alissa Cheung (violin), Stéphanie Bozzini (viola), Clemens Merkel (violin), Isabelle Bozzini (cello). Photograph: Michael Slobodian