Following on from 'Nostalghia - Song for Tarkovsky' and the solo piano album 'Un jour si blanc', this new recording completes a trilogy for Fran�ois Couturier and opens a new door for his quartet, known henceforth as the Tarkovsky Quartet. The unique band founded by the French pianist continues to draw inspiration from the films of Andrey Tarkovsky as its frame of reference expands. Allusions to Pergolesi, Bach and Shostakovich are to be found in the compositions here, as are compelling group improvisations.
Tarkovsky Quartet was recorded in the rich and responsive acoustics of the Auditorium RSI Lugano, site of many great ECM recordings, and the sleeve photo is by Tarkovsky himself. It includes liner notes by Charles H. de Brantes, Director of the Andrey Tarkovsky International Institute: It is to a true inner world that Fran�ois Couturier and the Tarkovsky Quartet give us a splendid access. Here are poetic ballads in which the voices of the piano, cello, accordion and saxophone rise up, answer one another, entwine, fade, and return.
Since 2006, when 'Nostalghia' was released, the quartet, comprising three French musicians - pianist Fran�ois Couturier, saxophonist Jean-Marc Larch� and accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier - together with German cellist Anja Lechner, has become a regular presence on the concert circuit and at the festivals. They have made impressive contributions to ECM events in Dinant, Frankfurt, Athens, Florence and Umbria.
Mixing classical rigour with improvisation both formal and free, what emerges is austerely beautiful, etched in sombre hues and redolent of an unslakeable thirst to connect with a deeper well of the spirit. - The Irish Times on the earlier 'Nostalghia - Song for Tarkovsky' album.
Personnel: Fran�ois Couturier (piano), Anja Lechner (cello), Jean-Marc Larch� (soprano saxophone), Jean-Louis Matinier (accordion)
