Anja Lechner / François Couturier LONTANO

LONTANO

 

Tarkovsky Quartet FRANÇOIS COUTURIER Nuit blanche

NUIT BLANCHE

François Couturier / Anja Lechner / Jean-Louis Matinier / Jean-Marc Larché TARKOVSKY QUARTET

TARKOVSKY QUARTET

Maria Farantouri / Cihan Türkoğlu BEYOND THE BORDERS

The album title is the programme in this meeting of remarkable artists brought together to interpret traditional music of Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Armenia, and to play original songs by Anatolian saz player Cihan Türkoğlu and lyricist Agathi Dimitroukas. In the spirit of the project, the new songs also bridge traditions and idioms and emphasize the potential of shared expression. Legendary Greek singer Maria Farantouri excels in this music beyond the borders, shaped also with the active participation of producer Manfred Eicher. German cellist Anja Lechner here draws on a knowledge of traditional folk forms gained partly through playing music of Armenian-Greek philosopher composer Gurdjieff. Armenian kanon (zither) player Meri Vardanyan has previously appeared on ECM as a member of the Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble. Ney player and ethnomusicologist Christos Barbas, from Thessaloniki, has played everything from music of the baroque to ragas. Percussionist İzzet Kızıl grew up in Eastern Turkey in an environment dominated by Sufi rhythms and has worked in many transcultural collaborations with artists from Natacha Atlas to Theodossi Spazzov, along the way evolving new approaches to traditional percussion.

Anja Lechner / Pablo Márquez SCHUBERT Die Nacht

German cellist Anja Lechner and Argentinean guitarist Pablo Márquez met in 2003 and have since explored the most diverse repertoire and modes of expression in their concerts. For their first duo album, a conceptual context is provided by the strong tradition of songs with guitar accompaniment prevalent in 19th century Vienna, as Lechner and Márquez play some of Schubert’s most beloved songs (including Die Nacht, Nacht und Träume and Der Leiermann), elegantly framing the album’s centrepiece: Schubert’s expansive ‘Arpeggione’ sonata. Many of Schubert’s songs were published in alternative versions with guitar during the composer’s lifetime; in some cases, the guitar version appeared even before the one for piano. Interspersed on the recording, as an echo and commentary to Schubert’s spirit and language, are the graceful Trois Nocturnes originally written for cello and guitar by Friedrich Burgmüller (1806-1874).

Anja Lechner / Agnès Vesterman VALENTIN SILVESTROV Hieroglyphen der Nacht

Released in time for the great Ukrainian composer’s 80th birthday on September 30, Hieroglyphen der Nacht features Valentin Silvestrov’s music for solo violoncello and for two cellos. German cellist Anja Lechner has had a long association with Silvestrov, first documented on the Grammy-nominated leggiero, pesante in 2001. Here she plays, alone, Augenblicke der Stille und Traurigkeit (of which she is the dedicatee), Lacrimosa, Walzer der Alpengöckchen, and Elegie (which calls for her to play both cello and tamtams). Lechner is joined by French cellist Agnès Vestermann, a frequent duo partner, to play Drei Stücke (dedicated to both musicians), 8.VI. 1810…zum Geburtstag R.A. Schumann, Zwei Serenaden, and 25.X.1893…zum Andenken an P.I. Tschaikowskij. As so often with Silvestrov, the compositions often take the form of metaphorical conversations with composers of the past and the present. Tchaikovsky and Schumann are amongst the composers referenced here, while Lacrimosa is a reaction to music of his friend Tigran Mansurian. “My own music is a response to and an echo of what already exists,” says Silvestrov, viewing his oeuvre as a series of “codas” to music history. Hieroglyphen der Nacht was recorded at Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, and produced by Manfred Eicher. (ECM Records)

Rosamunde Quartett ANTON WEBERN - DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH - EMIL FRANTISEK BURIAN

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.

'One of the finest discs to come from ECM of late by the little-known but distinguished Rosamunde Quartet. The Webern dates from his short-live Romantic period, in style close to late Strauss or Schoenberg of Verklärte Nacht. Shostakovich's elegiac String Quartet No. 8, dedicated to 'the victims of fascism and war', glints with irony and self-reference, while the Czech Burian manages to be at once sinister and dreamy.'  (Fiona Maddocks, The Observer)

VALENTIN SILVESTROV leggiero, pesante

Of all the words in music’s vocabulary, one of the commonest is "farewell" Many of the world’s greatest songs are addressed to the departing: the recently dead, lost lovers, missed opportunities. Music speaks of these things as memory speaks, makes us aware both of distance and of remaining closeness. Nothing is lost, music says: it is here. But also: it is here only because it cannot come back. … When it addresses leave-taking specifically, it has terms that include some of the oldest in the Western tradition. A four-note scalewise descent in the minor mode has been an image of lament since the Renaissance, and perhaps it accounts for the atmosphere of sadness that often gathers around minor-key harmony. A final cadence, particularly in slow music, can also sound like a valedicition, because this is the point at which music not only expresses passing but itself recedes.
This vanishing and this eternal presence have been the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s persistent topics through the last three decades, since he was in his 30’s and, like his Soviet contemporary Arvo Pärt, heard the past sounding through the gaps in modernism. …
At the opening of the First Quartet, for instance, there are the falling phrases and the omnipresent cadences that convey appeased grief, all at a very relaxed tempo and in a harmonic ambience as straightforward as that of a folk song. The Barber Adagio is only a step away. But then the picture begins to cloud. An expected harmony does not arrive and cannot be found. The instruments start slowly circling because they cannot think what else to do. Inexplicable dissonances creep in. The music seems to be losing its way, and eventually it just comes to a sounding stop on a sustained soft discord, fading into toneless whispers.
There is an effort here to refresh aged notions. Because Mr. Silvestrov’s turns of phrase are never quite completed – or because any completion sounds partial and tentative – they reach to some extent from the realm of the borrowed to speak firmly and newly. And they help themselves do so both by taking on novel timbres ( the vibratoless sounds of the quartet) and by extending a strong appeal to their performers (an appeal to which a particularly powerful, rich and vital response comes from the cellist Anja Lechner and the pianist Silke Avenhaus in two works). (Paul Griffiths, The New York Times)

Rosamunde Quartett DINO SALUZZI

The Kultrum collaboration between Argentinian bandoneon master Dino Saluzzi and the Munich-based German-Austrian-Australian Rosamunde Quartet was initiated in 1996. Featuring Saluzzi's chamber music for bandoneon and string quartet, Kultrum is both a "departure" and an extension of Dino's previous ECM recordings (in fact the title echoes that of his first disc for the label), in which - as Swiss critic Peter Rüedi has noted - he acknowledges and then transgresses the boundaries: between composition and improvisation, between so-called serious and popular music, between folk music and jazz and tango.

The genesis of the project, however, can be traced back specifically to Saluzzi's solo album Andina of 1988 and a small piece added as a postscript to that session. The sound of the bandoneon on "Memories" seemed to imply a wave of orchestration, and the suggestion that a string quartet could bring this out more fully was left for Saluzzi to ponder.

In the interim, the Rosamunde Quartet - whose tastes are unusually comprehensive for a classical ensemble - raised Saluzzi's name among a list of enthusiasms from Haydn to Nono in the course of production discussions with ECM. A Munich concert by the Saluzzi Trio provided an opportunity for Dino and cellist Anja Lechner to meet and exchange ideas and in June 1996, the Saluzzi-Rosamunde collective began rehearsing together.

Saluzzi insists that tango players would have been inadequate interpreters of his new music. "I needed freedom from the tango form. At the same time, I also feel responsibility to conserve the tradition, and it's dangerous to move, but we have to move." Not least to defend the territory from the numerous classical players claiming Argentine inspirations this season - now that Piazzolla is safely dead!

The Kultrum project has toured over the last two years, to critical and public acclaim, as Saluzzi and the quartet have honed the material. A few days before the recording at the Austrian monastery of St Gerold (site of such significant New Series recordings as the Jan Garbarek/Hilliard Ensemble Officium album, Giya Kancheli's Exil, Paul Giger's Schattenwelt, Michelle Makarski's Caoine and Eduard Brunner's Dal Niente), the collective played an ecstatically-received concert at Munich's Prinzregententheater. (ECM Records)

Rosamunde Quartett TIGRAN MANSURIAN String Quartets

Mansurian writes extremely well for quartet; the textures and polyphonic working are basically traditional, with little in the way of outré effect. … The Second Quartet consists of three slow movements, putting one in mind of the five Adagios of Shostakovich’s Fifteenth Quartet. This is a work of ravishing if crepuscular beauty, deeply tonal, whose melodic language is partly influenced by a song by the much-loved Armenian national composer Komitas as well as by Armenian sacred music of the middle ages. … The performances by the Rosamunde Quartett of all three works bespeak utter identification with the music and create a very finely tuned chiaroscuro of quiet dynamics. (Calum MacDonald / International Record Review)

Both string quartets are beautiful, profoundly moving pieces of great consolatory power and expressive strength, albeit in discreet and introspective. However, for all its apparent simplicity, Mansurian’s music cannot be compared with what is now often referred to as Holy Minimalism… Because of its predominantly melodic character, Mansurian is more linear and more coherent from a stylistic point of view. … These splendid performances were recorded under the composer’s supervision and have a strong ring of authenticity. They are not likely to be superseded anytime soon. (Hubert Culot / Music Web)

Imbued with dark emotions, the music is not meant for easy listening, but like a good novel, it communicates a real human condition and predicament. Through these intimate compositions, we get closer to the inner world of Tigran Mansurian, the enigmatic and soulful composer with a searching mind. (Ara Arakelian / The Armenian Reporter inernational) 

  

Rosamunde Quartett THOMAS LARCHER Ixxu

The four chamber works by Austrian Thomas Larcher recorded here show that's he's a composer to watch out for. His compositional voice is strikingly unencumbered by adherence to any orthodoxy, and his work is direct in its emotional and intellectual communication. My Illness Is the Medicine I Need, for soprano, violin, cello, and piano, is particularly effective; its aphoristic texts come from a Benetton "Colors" magazine that included photographs of psychiatric hospitals and quotations from their patients. Larcher's understated text setting allows the voices of the patients to be heard with unaffected bleakness and it is strongly moving. Even though it uses a contemporary harmonic language, the string quartet Ixxu (1998-2004) is old-fashioned in its emotional clarity. Its last movement, "ruhig," is genuinely peaceful and brings to mind the serenity of Arvo Pärt's Fratres. His 1990 quartet Cold Farmer is similarly direct and generous in inviting the listener in, and here again the slow movement is especially deeply felt and engaging. The Rosamunde Quartett performs Ixxu and Cold Farmer with passion and conviction. In the other works, soprano Andrea Lauren Brown, violinist Christoph Poppen, cellist Thomas Demenga, and the composer at the piano give comparably intense and committed performances. ECM's sound is intimate and clean. (Stephen Eddins)

François Couturier / Anja Lechner / Jean-Marc Larché / Jean Louis Matinier TARKOVSKY QUARTET

In 2005, French pianist François Couturier organized a quartet with cellist Anja Lechner, accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier, and soprano saxophonist Jean-Marc Larché to record Nostalghia: Song for Tarkovsky, released by ECM in 2006, an album that paid tribute to Soviet film director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), not by playing music used in his films, but instead by creating new compositions, played in a jazz/classical hybrid, that evoked the moods of the filmmaker's works. The group toured as the Tarkovsky Quartet, and the 2011 album Tarkovsky Quartet is a follow-up recording in the same manner; since Couturier's 2009 solo piano CD Un Jour Si Blanc also paid tribute to Tarkovsky, it can be seen as the completion of a trilogy. As with Nostalghia, the quartet also overtly references various classical composers in the music, with the opening track, "A Celui Qui a Vu l'Ange," based on Pergolesi's "Stabat Mater," "Doktor Faustus" on Shostakovitch's "Sonata for Violoncello and Piano, Op. 40," and "Maroussia" and "La Passion Selon Andrei" drawing on Johann Sebastian Bach. The nearly ambient "San Galagno," with its glacially slow presentation of notes; the oddly atonal "Sardor," a collection of squeaks and squawks; and "Le Main et l'Oiseau" ("The Hand and the Bird") are all group improvisations by the four musicians. The actual relation to Tarkovsky is more inferential than specific, as an examination of the titles indicates. Whereas the tracks on Nostalghia often referred to actual Tarkovsky films, those here are more tangential. "Myshkin," for instance, is the name of a character in the fiction of Dostoyevsky about whom Tarkovsky intended to make a movie, but never did; he also wanted to direct a film based on Thomas Mann's novel Doktor Faustus, but did not. Leaving aside such associations, the quartet's music can be seen as contemplative, improvisational third-stream jazz very much in the ECM style, even if the cinematic and literary allusions are part of the overall appreciation of it. (William Ruhlmann)

François Couturier / Anja Lechner / Jean-Marc Larché / Jean-Louis Matinier NOSTALGHIA - SONG FOR TARKOVSKY

French pianist François Couturier was inspired by Soviet film director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) in creating the music on this album, but it should be noted at the outset that the album does not contain any music actually used in Tarkovsky's films in general or his 1983 movie Nostalghia in particular. Rather, Couturier, who states his admiration for Tarkovsky in his brief liner notes, saying that has "seen all his films over and over again," tried to evoke the mood of those films in writing these pieces of music, several of which share titles with them. Typically, Couturier also borrowed from several classical works, acknowledging that "Le Sacrifice" and "L'Éternal Retour" were "inspired by" Bach's Matthäuspassion; that "Nostalghia" and "Andrei" contain "references to" Alfred Schnittke's Sonata No. 1 for Violoncello and Piano; and that "Toliu" has "allusions to" Pergolesi's Stabat Mater. He took this music to three longtime musical compatriots, cellist Anja Lechner, soprano saxophonist Jean-Marc Larché, and accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier. The resulting quartet creates a free jazz/contemporary classical hybrid that will sound familiar to fans of the record label issuing the disc. "Song for Tarkovsky is a project that fits very naturally in ECM's soundworld," states a sentence in the album's press release, and that's certainly true. There are times, notably in the piano work in "Miroir," when one might be listening to an ECM Keith Jarrett album, with its haunting, echoed playing. The music arguably does evoke the style of Tarkovsky's filmmaking, particularly its contemplative tone and extremely long takes. But listeners don't have to be familiar with those movies to respond to it. (William Ruhlmann)

François Couturier / Tarkovsky Quartet NUIT BLANCHE

Following their sublime duo outing, Moderato Cantabile (ECM, 2014), cellist Anja Lechner and François Couturier reunite in the pianist's quartet responsible for two-thirds of a recorded trilogy for ECM Records, all devoted to Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, whose name would ultimately become synonymous with the group: Tarkovsky Quartet. 

Bookending Couturier's second album of the trilogy, 2010's solo piano session Un jour si blanc, 2006's Nostalghia—Songs for Tarkovsky and 2011's Tarkovsky Quartet established Couturier's quartet—also featuring soprano saxophonist Jean March Larche and accordionist Jean Louis Matinier—as a chamber-like group with increasingly deep chemistry, a particularly profound allegiance to the value of space and significance of decay, and an ability to improvise and/or interpret with equal parts discretion and taste, whether it's vividly lyrical or more jaggedly angular, thoroughly scripted or completely open-ended. 

With Nuit Blanche, Couturier's trilogy becomes a quadrilogy, as his quartet expands its horizons even farther than ever before on an album that explores ambiguous nether-regions of time, space and consciousness. Being from a group that may not record or perform together as often as they (or their fans) might like, there are other projects that keep the internal chemistry growing...and in contexts that, as different as they are, provide grist for alternative explorations when everyone comes together as Tarkovsky Quartet.

Anja Lechner / Kadri Voorand TONU KORVITS Mirror

Mirror is the first ECM New Series album from Estonian composer Tõnu Kõrvitz (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,   Kõrvitz 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 Kõrvitz on kannel, the Estonian psaltery. (ECM Records)

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Anja Lechner / Amsterdam Sinfonietta / Candida Thompson TIGRAN MANSURIAN Quasi Parlando

“Quasi Parlando” is an important addition to ECM’s documentation of the work of Tigran Mansurian, an often breathtaking account of highly original contemporary chamber orchestra music. Issued in the wake of his 75th birthday, the album opens with the Armenian composer’s fiercely-concentrated Double Concerto, and proceeds to new music performed by its dedicatees: the lyrical Romance, dedicated to Moldavian violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and the intensely expressive Quasi Parlando, dedicated to German cellist Anja Lechner. Both are world premiere recordings, as is the Concerto No 2, subtitled Four Serious Songs, which concludes the programme. Throughout, the soloists deliver committed performances, as does the Amsterdam Sinfonietta under the direction of Candida Thompson. 

In the liner notes, Wolfgang Sandner describes title piece Quasi Parlando, composed in 2012, as one of the works which best exemplify Mansurian’s aesthetics of reduction: “Every note is exactly where it belongs. Compositional feeling seems at one with the innate potential of the sounds. Yet we are amazed to hear how the cello’s rhetorical figures congeal into an effective and expressive art that transcends the conceptualisations of speech.” The Romance, composed a year earlier, initially retains the four-bar periods of a simple but moving folk song until the strings enter a dialogue with the solo violin, whereupon a transformation takes place... 

In terms of textural density, Mansurian’s music has seen some changes in the thirty years that separate the composing of the Double Concerto and the Four Serious Songs, but his aesthetic stance has been consistent, both works sharing an immediacy of expression and rigorous creative will. At the same time, the composer encourages a degree of creative freedom from his music’s interpreters: “What is important is what the music needs, not what I need”, he said in a talk given at the Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, immediately before the recording of these pieces in October 2012. 

Patricia Kopatchinskaja has described the violin part of Four Serious Songs as “pure spirit and magic... Tigran’s music is some of the strongest of our time.”

Anja Lechner / François Couturier KOMITAS - GURDJIEFF - MOMPOU Moderato Cantabile

After a decade of shared work in the Tarkovsky Quartet and an ongoing alliance in the Pergolesi Project (with singer Maria Pia De Vito), German cellist Anja Lechner and French pianist François Couturier unveil their new duo. The players approach the music from different vantage points: Lechner is a classical soloist with an uncommon interest in improvisation, Couturier a jazz musician travelling ever further from jazz. On Moderato cantabile they present their own arrangements of works by three fascinating outsiders from the margins of music history – G.I. Gurdjieff, Komitas, and Federico Mompou. To differing degree their music reveals influences from the east, both in terms of relationship to folk traditions and religious music, and philosophically. A contemplative air pervades the session. The programme has connections to Anja Lechner’s acclaimed account of Gurdjieff’s music on the earlier Chants, Hymns and Dances (with Vassilis Tsabropoulos), but the new duo has its own identity, and time spent in Armenia has deepened Lechner’s understanding of the contexts from which the music emerged: her cello assumes almost a singer’s role in these pieces, exploring the strong melodies. François Couturier’s compositions function as both contrasting and complementary elements. As a player, François has a long history of working with Mompou’s music. He has been influenced, furthermore, by his association with Anouar Brahem, and the sonorities of the Middle East are part of his palette. Moderato cantabile, a striking and unusual album, was recorded in the rich acoustics of the Lugano studio in November 2013 and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Franҫois Couturier is featured here both as player and composer and his pieces function as both contrasting and complementary elements. As the liner notes point out, “Years spent in the company of Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem seem to have reinforced a contemplative element in Couturier’s own idiom as player, composer, arranger. A reflective patience is characteristic of much of his work. In his music, with or without a score, themes tend to be slowly unfolded and developed. His compositions are ‘evolutionary’, open to change in the moment, and his improvisations maintain a lyrical awareness and sense of form. Unlike many improvising contemporaries he is unafraid to broach the brink of silence – making him perhaps a natural interpreter for Mompou’s Música Callada.” Couturier has previously played arrangements of Mompou in jazz piano trio contexts, and the Catalan composer has been an important reference for him, just as the Transcaucasian Gurdjieff and the Armenian Komitas Vardapet have been important references for Lechner. The cellist first came to understand Komitas’s role in bridging Armenian secular and sacred music though her work with Tigran Mansurian. Her interpretations of Gurdjieff, meanwhile, had a powerful impact in Armenia, and inspired the foundation of the Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble. Once again on Moderato cantabile Lechner and Couturier, with their new arrangements of Komitas, Gurdjieff and Mompou, show us that this music responds to a freely interpretative approach. Moderato cantabile was recorded in the rich acoustics of Lugano’s Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera in November 2013, and produced by Manfred Eicher. Anja Lechner, born in Kassel, Germany, studied with Heinrich Schiff and Janos Starker. She has performed as soloist with orchestras including the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Slowakische Philharmonie, and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, and plays chamber music with partners including pianists Alexei Lubimov, Silke Avenhaus and Kirill Gerstein, cellist Agnès Vesterman, violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and clarinetist Reto Bieri. Lechner has premiered compositions by Tigran Mansurian, Valentin Silvestrov, Tõnu Kõrvits and Annette Focks amongst others. For 18 years she was the cellist of the Rosamunde Quartet, whose acclaimed ECM New Series albums embraced a scope of music from Joseph Haydn to Thomas Larcher. Her most recent recordings include Mansurian’s Quasi Parlando and Double Concerto with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. In preparation is an album of solos and duos with Agnès Vesterman, playing compositions of Silvestrov. At home in all aspects of classical music, she is also fluent in diverse improvisational traditions, and has a long-running collaboration with bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi – documented in the film El Encuentro and on albums including Ojos Negros and Navidad de Los Andes. François Couturier began playing piano at the age of six. After completing studies in classical music and musicology in the early 1970s, he began improvising in earnest, initially taking his cue from Paul Bley, Chick Corea and Joachim Kühn. In 1980 he won France’s Prix Django Reinhardt which raised his international profile, and shortly thereafter joined John McLaughlin’s group, touring and recording with the English guitarist. Couturier’s first appearance on ECM was on Anouar Brahem’s Khomsa in 1994. From 2001, he toured widely with the oud player in trio with accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier, and is featured on the albums Le pas du chat noir and Voyage de Sahar. He also appears on Brahem’s forthcoming album Souvenance: Music for oud, quartet and string orchestra. His recordings with Anja Lechner include Nostalghia – Song for Tarkovsky and Tarkovsky Quartet which incorporate his compositions as well as group improvising. Il Pergolese features his arrangements of music of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. Other Couturier recordings on ECM are Poros, duets with violinist Dominique Pifarély, and the solo piano album Un jour si blanc.

Maria Pia de Vito / François Couturier / Anja Lechner / Michele Rabbia IL PERGOLESE

A project paying tribute to 18th century composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710 – 1736), Il Pergolese presents new arrangements and improvisation inspired by opera and sacred music. Singer Maria Pia De Vito, pianist François Couturier, cellist Anja Lechner and percussionist Michele Rabbia also consider Pergolesi’s relationship to the art music and the popular music of Naples from a contemporary perspective,. The text of the Stabat Mater – translated into Neapolitan by Maria Pia De Vito – and the opera arias, are transformed into songs and vivid narrative, open frames providing the key to reinterpreting Pergolesi. François Couturier's arrangements widen Pergolesi's structures, offering space for much improvisational interaction. For Il Pergolese is a real group project with creative from all participants, a discourse among sounds with rhythms generated by drums and metals and sampled and real-time electronics. “Sound textures grow dense with the richness of instrumental counterpoint or are set free in electronic soundscapes and along coloristic, percussive lines, as cello becomes voice or voice becomes an instrument” says Maria Pia De Vito in a performer’s note in the CD booklet.

The project was commissioned by the Festival Pergolesi-Spontini of Jesi in 2011. Reviewing the premiere performance, Augusta Franco Cardinali of Voce della Vallesina wrote of “unforeseen impressions for the listener. Crystallized sound fragments expand into flares of notes like meteors. Pergolesi’s music emerges, becomes increasingly recognizable until it is transformed into prayer... This music, in which different styles are blended together, cannot be categorized. It would be inexact to call it ‘experimental music’, since its sound material, both vocal and instrumental, is treated with uncommon sensitivity, competence, intelligence, and stylistic elegance as well as technical expertise...” The improvisational component ensures that each performance of Il Pergolese is unique. The present interpretation was recorded in Lugano in December 2012, with Manfred Eicher as producer.

Three of the protagonists of Il Pergolese – François Couturier, Anja Lechner and Michele Rabbia are well-known to ECM listeners. German cellist Lechner has appeared on more than twenty ECM recordings playing everything from tango with Dino Saluzzi to compositions of Mansurian and Silvestrov with the Rosamunde Quartet or arrangements of Gurdjieff with Vassilis Tsabropoulos. At home with both improvisation and the classical tradition, Lechner is, with Dino Saluzzi, the subject of the documentary film “El Encuentro” made by Norbert Wiedmer & Enrique Ros and recently issued by ECM on DVD.

French pianist François Couturier is the founder-composer of the Tarkovsky Quartet, of which Anja Lechner is a member, and also plays in duo with the cellist. Couturier’s other ECM albums include a solo recording Un jour si blanc, and a duo disc with violinist Dominique Pifarély, as well as recordings with Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem.

Italian percussionist Michele Rabbia has been the principal drummer of Stefano Battaglia’s projects since 2000 and appears on several ECM discs with the pianist including Raccolto, Re: Pasolini and Pastorale a disc of duets incorporating his live electronic treatments. Rabbia has collaborated with numerous musicians, the long list including Enrico Rava, Charlie Mariano, Antonello Sallis, Dominique Pifarély, Rita Marcotuli, the Italian Instabile Orchestra, Sainkho Namchylak, Paul McCandless and many others.

Singer Maria Pia De Vito makes her ECM debut with Il Pergolese. She has long been active in improvisation and jazz with musical partners including John Taylor, Ralph Towner, Rita Marcatouli, Norma Winstone, Steve Swallow, Paolo Fresu, Gianluigi Trovesi, Giorgio Gaslini, Colin Towns and many more. Musical research, exploring beneath the work’s surfaces, has been a key element of her performances from the outset, whether the music at hand has been jazz of the American songbook, idiosyncratic Neapolitan vocal music (De Vito is herself a native of Naples), adaptations of Monteverdi with Bruno Tommaso or – as on the present disc – Pergolesi as an improvisational resource.