For her first solo-violoncello album on ECM’s New Series, Anja Lechner devotes herself to a particularly unique convergence of three composers from vastly different contexts: JS Bach, Carl Friedrich Abel and Tobias Hume. In the past, her extensive discography has captured the cellist as part of the renowned Rosamunde Quartett, as well as alongside seminal artists from both trans-idiomatic sound worlds and the realm of classical music, gracing her with rare musical farsightedness. With her distinct perspective on works composed for both violoncello and viola da gamba, Lechner sheds a fresh light on music written within a span of two centuries. Framing the first two solo suites from the famous group of six Bach wrote for the violoncello at its heart, the programme encompasses Abel and Hume compositions, originally conceived for viola da gamba, which are given new colour and breadth through Lechner’s interpretation on cello – In parts newly arranged by herself. And at the end, as Kristina Maidt-Zinke notes in the album-accompanying liner notes, “one marvels at the lightness and inner logic with which three worlds have ever so gently touched one another”. The album was recorded at the Himmelfahrtskirche in Munich and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Lontano
Die Nacht
Quasi parlando
Hieroglyphen der Nacht
Nuit blanche
Tarkovsky Quartet
Nostalghia
Ojos Negros
Navidad de los Andes
El Encuentro
Kultrum
Moderato cantabile
Chants, Hymns and Dances
leggiero, pesante
Mirror
Il Pergolese
Melos
Her First Dance
Night
The Seven Words
String Quartets – Tigran Mansurian
IXXU
Notturno
Song of Songs
Beyond The Borders
Music for the Film
La notte
Rosamunde Quartett
Anton Webern / Dimitri Shostakovich / Emil František Burian - Rosamunde Quartett
The German-Austrian-Australian Rosamunde Quartett München was formed in 1991 by four musicians of widely differing backgrounds, and given early encouragement by Sergiu Celibedache and Heinrich Schiff. A major success at the Berliner Festwochen a year later elevated them to ‚the elite of the lofty guild of string quartets‘ to quote one German critic, and since then they have toured the major festivals. The undervalued work of Czech composer Burian has been one of the quartet’s enthusiasms from the outset. Here they contrast his 4th String Quartet with Shostakovich’s 8th – in the process alluding to the troubled biographies of both men – in a programme that begins with Webern’s farewell to Romanticism in the Langsamer Satz.
