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BACH ABEL HUME
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
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
Rosamunde Quartett
The Seven Words
String Quartets – Tigran Mansurian
IXXU
Notturno
Song of Songs
Beyond The Borders
Music for the Film
La notte

Nuit blanche

Tarkovsky Quartet: François Couturier / Anja Lechner / Jean-Marc Larché / Jean-Louis Matinier

Ingmar Bergman once said of Andrey Tarkovsky, “He moves with such naturalness in the room of dreams,” and the French-German quartet named after the great Russian filmmaker has developed an associative dream-language of its own. For leader and pianist François Couturier the “silence and slowness of Tarkovsky” are closely related to an “ECM aesthetic” further developed on the group’s third album Nuit blanche, produced by Manfred Eicher in Lugano in April 2016. Here pieces variously composed by François Couturier, or created in the moment by Couturier, cellist Anja Lecher, saxophonist Jean-Marc Larché and accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier, explore the texture of dreams and memory and continue to make oblique reference to Tarkovsky. Whether playing improvised chamber music, modern composition or baroque music, the creative originality of the Tarkovsky Quartet shines through.