October 18: ECM New Series Releases Anja Lechner's New Album featuring Bach, Abel, Hume - First Single Out Now
ECM New Series Releases
Anja Lechner
Bach, Abel, Hume
Anja Lechner, violoncello
First Single Hume’s A Question Out Now
Listen: https://ecm.lnk.to/BachAbelHume
Release Date: October 18, 2024
ECM New Series 2806
CD: 0289 4875881 4
Press downloads and CDs available upon request
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 – “one of the most gifted cellists in the world” (Strings magazine) – 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 are 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. Connecting all three composers is a certain improvisatory notion within the fabric of their work, second-nature for composers and musicians between the 16th–18th centuries, when these three lived.
Opening the programme are works by Hume, preserved in the very first print edition, namely the collection “The First Part Of Ayres” from 1605. The Scottish composer (and former soldier)’s pieces can be understood as depictions of moods or frames of minds, each of the 116 dances and miniatures in the collection (mostly notated in tablature) corresponding to slightly different temperaments. “A Question”, “An Answer”, “Harke Harke” – a narrative is broached, to be concluded with the final piece on the album, Hume’s tuneful “Touch Me Lightly”. The composer’s lyrical qualities are emphasized in Anja Lechner’s thoughtful interpretation, bringing new, subtle characteristics to the fore.
Of the 150 years later composer Carl Friedrich Abel, Anja Lechner addresses the Arpeggio and Adagio, each in d minor. Lechner endows the already intense scores with her own expressivity in these fluid performances. It’s a fitting preamble to Bach’s violoncello suites Nos. 1&2 in G major and d minor, where the cellist channels the full range of her deep experience in the genre and delivers powerful readings of this core repertory.
Reviewing a solo recital from 2022, where Lechner likewise performed one of Bach’s violoncello suites, among other works, the German daily paper Süddeutsche Zeitung praised cellist’s unique “delivery, which always underlines her precise articulation in a most musical fashion”, noting how her performances are marked by a “sense of longing anchored in deep and serious elegance”. The same dedicated and impassioned sense of abandon can be heard and felt here. 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, recorded at the Himmelfahrtskirche in Munich, was produced by Manfred Eicher.
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“One of the most gifted cellists in the world, often bridging the gap between contemporary and traditional, east and west, and arranged and improvisational music” – Greg Cahill, Strings, USA
Starting from her deep roots in classic music, Anja Lechner’s musical path has led her to explore a wide range of trans-idiomatic expressions and improvisational traditions, with a discography that embraces a multitude of collaborators from various countries and cultures.
The violoncellist’s projects for ECM include a long-running artistic collaboration with Argentine bandoneonist-composer Dino Saluzzi (El Encuentro, Navidad de los Andes, Ojos negros and, with the Rosamunde Quartet, Kultrum); music by composer-philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff (Chants, Hymns and Dances), a recording made in partnership Greek pianist Vassilis Tsabropoulos which topped the US classical charts and several recordings with the Tarkovsky Quartet. She recorded two albums with the quartet’s pianist François Couturier (Moderato Cantabile, Lontano) as well as the highly acclaimed 2018 duo recording of Schubert works in duo with guitarist Pablo Marquez (Die Nacht) and more. Lechner was the cellist of the Munich-based Rosamunde Quartet, whose acclaimed ECM New Series recordings include music by Mansurian, Schoeck, Larcher, Webern, Shostakovich, Burian, Haydn, and Yoffe.