Recordings

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
Nuit blanche
Tarkovsky Quartet
Nostalghia
Ojos Negros
Navidad de los Andes
El Encuentro
Kultrum
Moderato cantabile
Chants, Hymns and Dances
leggiero, pesante
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

Mirror

Tõnu Kõrvits - Anja Lechner / Tõnu Kaljuste / Kadri Voorand / Tallinn Chamber Orchestra / Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir

Mirror is the first ECM New Series album from Estonian composer Tõnu Kõrvits (born 1969), who emphasizes his links to his homeland’s music at several levels. The album begins with a fantasy on a song by Veljo Tormis. Like the older composer,   Kõrvits has been influenced by folk song and archaic musical tradition, which find their echo in the refined and texturally-rich spectrum of his own, labyrinthine pieces.  His music is well served here by the Tallin Chamber Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber under  Tõnu Kaljuste’s assured direction and by soloist Anja Lechner.  Lechner’s cello is foregrounded in Peegeldused Tasaset Maast (2013),  Laul (2012, rev. 2013) and the album’s largest piece Seitsme  Linnu Seitse Und (2009, rev. 2012), a collaboration with the poet Maarja Kangro, which is both choral suite and cello concerto. In these “seven dreams of seven birds” the choir sings in Estonian and English and the cello conjures both birdsong and swooping flight.  Tasase Maa (“Song of the Plainland”), a fresh arrangement of a Tormis melody has Kadri Voorand as vocal soloist, supported by strings and by Tõnu Kõrvits on kannel, the Estonian psaltery.