Ended the week and welcomed the weekend with Lontano by Anja Lechner / François Couturier, released on ECM in 2020.

Tyran Grillo wrote for ECM Reviews:

"On Lontano, the cello of Anja Lechner and the piano of François Couturier play the roles of scenery and camera. As the lens bends the light into a discernible image yet changes that image in the process of fixing it within a frame, Couturier funnels Lechner’s sunbeams laden with stories that can only be heard with the eyes (and vice versa). If such a description seems too cerebral or even bogus, it’s only because the music it seeks to capture doesn’t accompany it...

If the “Praeludium” tells us anything, it’s that awakening in this scenario can only take place when there is both sun and dew. Otherwise, the dawn might have nothing to kiss as it peers over the not-so-distant mountaintops."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzH-IirTlWg&list=OLAK5uy_nM46CBBtIzhmVrlrGlNHHQVLaHC5MvGkE

#AnjaLechner #FrancoisCouturier #ECMReviews #ECM #Music #Cello #Improvisation #Jazz #TyranGrillo

Amsterdam Sinfonietta features Tigran Mansurian

Amsterdam, 12-10-2012 – Amsterdam Sinfonietta tours the Netherlands with music by the Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian. Yesterday four of his works were played in Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Amsterdam. The Moldavian violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaya was the soloist in Ernste Gesänge for violin and string orchestra, and combined forces with the German cellist Anja Lechner in Double Concerto for cello and string orchestra.

Thea Derks & Tigran Mansurian, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ 12

Mansurian wrote two new compositons fot both the soloists, that were premiered to great acclaim by an almost full house: Romance (Kopatchinskaya) and Quasi parlando (Lechner). The audience was impressed by Mansurian’s meditative and delicate style, that sometimes concentrates on one note only.

In my pre concert talk both Kopatchinskaya and Lechner stressed that it requieres immense concentration and skill to get to the essence of Mansurian’s music. They succeeded brilliantly, for the audience gave them, and Amsterdam Sinfonietta, a very enthusiastic applause.

Tigran Mansurian took part in my introduction, too. Because he only speaks Armenian and Russian, his assistant Chagigh translated. Mansurian explained that his music is a continuous search for the truth, which he hardly ever finds. His music is deeply rooted in Armenian folk song, and on my request the composer performed the subdued Hovarek (‘Blow a breeze, dear mountains’).

You can listen to our talk on Soundcloud

The four works presented by Amsterdam Sinfonietta yesterday, will be released on cd by the German new music label ECM.

#AmsterdamSinfonietta #AnjaLechner #ArmenianMusic #contemporaryMusic #MuziekgebouwAanTIJ #PatriciaKopatchinskaya #TheaDerks #TigranMansurian

Ended Monday and welcomed Tuesday after a swim with Ojos Negros an album by Argentine bandoneón player and composer Dino Saluzzi with cellist Anja Lechner, recorded in April 2006 and released on ECM the following year.

Tyran Grillo wrote for ECM Reviews:

There’s no better way to describe the wondrousness of Ojos Negros than to quote dance historian Sally Sommer: “Tango is self-transformation.” This groundbreaking debut of a duo nearly a decade in the making smacks of Sommer’s insight, works its fingers raw with the labor of its fluid intuition. Tango would be nothing without memory. That bandoneonista Dino Saluzzi and cellist Anja Lechner bring such a level of awareness to every note and space between alike is graspable enough. Less so are the whispers behind their collaboration, the linking impulse through which they sing as one...

https://ecmreviews.com/2013/07/25/ojos-negros/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwWWA4-imv4&list=OLAK5uy_kg3MGtPkkZkjSLGN1yWx0ot2GGERtMxSA

#DinoSaluzzi #bandoneon #cello #AnjaLechner #ECM #ECMReviews #Tango #Music

Ended the week and welcomed the weekend with Lontano by Anja Lechner / François Couturier, released on ECM in 2020.

Tyran Grillo wrote for ECM Reviews:

On Lontano, the cello of Anja Lechner and the piano of François Couturier play the roles of scenery and camera. As the lens bends the light into a discernible image yet changes that image in the process of fixing it within a frame, Couturier funnels Lechner’s sunbeams laden with stories that can only be heard with the eyes (and vice versa)...

If the “Praeludium” tells us anything, it’s that awakening in this scenario can only take place when there is both sun and dew. Otherwise, the dawn might have nothing to kiss as it peers over the not-so-distant mountaintops. In so much of what follows, the inverted images in those pinhead orbs find themselves repeated in blissful aberration.

https://ecmreviews.com/2021/12/08/anja-lechner-francois-couturier-lontano-ecm-2682/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzH-IirTlWg&list=OLAK5uy_nM46CBBtIzhmVrlrGlNHHQVLaHC5MvGkE

#AnjaLechner #violoncello
#FrançoisCouturier #piano #ecm #ecmreviews

Ended the week and started the weekend with Melos by Tsabropoulos/Lechner/Gandhi released on ECM in 2008

Tyran Grillo wrote on ECM Reviews:

"The second album from Greek pianist Vassilis Tsabropoulos and German cellist Anja Lechner, would seem to be a sequel to Chants, Hymns and Dances, but is in many ways a restructuring of that same cosmos rather than a parallel universe to it...

The title of Melos refers to the arrangement of notes into a discernible tune (hence: melody), and in this respect its contents succeed beautifully. The title track starts the album with an all-encompassing embrace. Lechner navigates Tsabropoulos’s delicate ostinato in such a way that, even as the pianist continues exploring the ripple effect of her measured silence, when the cello reprises the theme, it does so newly fortified with sacred energy..."

#ecm #ecmreviews #VassilisTsabropoulos #AnjaLechner #Gurdjieff

https://ecmreviews.com/2014/09/09/melos/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J47H0tX1iGQ&list=OLAK5uy_mhQUayEL3tf4ztgBoUlF6HIJiRrtPKB3A

Ended the weekend and started the week after a swim with Chants, Hymns and Dances on ECM New Series by Anja Lechner and Vassilis Tsabropoulos from 2004.

Tyran Grillo wrote for ECM Reviews:

"The enigmatic sound-world of G. I. Gurdjieff (c.1877-1948) made its first appearance on ECM via the spirited renditions of pianist Keith Jarrett. Now another wizard at the keyboard, Vassilis Tsabropoulos, joins kindred spirit cellist Anja Lechner for a redrawing of old maps alongside the newly discovered continents of Tsabropoulos’s own stilling compositions around Byzantine hymns. The result is less a hybrid and more of a conversation across (and of) time. Harmonically a simple world, it elides the trappings of the social, forging its own divine concept in the grip of ideological binds.."

https://ecmreviews.com/2012/04/07/chants-hymns-and-dances/

#Gurdjieff #ecm #ecmreviews #VassilisTsabropoulos #AnjaLechner #morningmadnessmusic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8ueZ8dtl2o&list=OLAK5uy_nrBuAMA5ZrftqBFTlt0EL9uDGk3kaVCWs&index=1