The unique band founded by François Couturier 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. As the Irish Times wrote of the earlier “Nostalghia – Song for Tarkovsky” album (recorded 2005): “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.”
Tarkovsky Quartet
François Couturier, Anja Lechner, Jean-Louis Matinier, Jean-Marc Larché
- 1A celui qui a vu l'ange
08:29 - 2Tiapa
05:51 - 3San Galgano
02:56 - 4Maroussia
06:48 - 5Mychkine
06:10 - 6Mouchette
02:40 - 7La passion selon Andreï
04:18 - 8L'Apocalypse
05:39 - 9Doktor Faustus
08:38 - 10Sardor
02:53 - 11La main et l'oiseau
03:12 - 12De l'autre côté du miroir
04:46
Der französischen Jazzpianist François Couturier und sein Trakovsky Quartet begeben sich musikalisch auf die Suche nach jenen poetischen Lebensmomenten, welche einen mit plötzlicher Emotionalität und olympischer Ruhe überfallen. Schon die Besetzung des Quartetts mit der klassischen Cellistin Anja Lechner, dem improvisierenden Akkordeonisten Jean-Louis Martinier und dem Jazz-Saxofonisten Jean-Marc Larché führt weit weg von stilistisch vorgefertigten Bahnen, und so begegnen wir auch auf ihrer neuen CD „Tarkovsky Quartet“ einer Musik, die eklektische Elemente eigenwillig zu einem neuen Ganzen verschmilzt und deren Tarkowski-Melancholie man sich nicht entziehen kann.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Couturier met le soin de l’écriture et des plages d’improvisation au service d’une œuvre: celle que lui suggère Tarkovsky. Accompagne-t-il un film imaginaire? Non. Il s’adresse “à celui qui a vu l’ange” – épitaphe sur la tombe du cinéaste –, au fou de Bresson (“Mouchette”), à San Galgano, l’abbaye en ruine de “Nostalghia”. Tout répond à une passion lumineuse. “La Passion” est le titre que Tarkovsky voulait donner à son film “Andrei Roublev”.
Francis Marmande, Le Monde
Hier ließ sich Couturier erneut von seiner Begeisterung für das filmische Werk von Andrej Tarkowski (1932-86) inspirieren, um eine kammermusikalisch konzipierte, mit improvisierten Freiräumen und gruppendynamischen Spontan-Einsprengseln versehene Hommage einzuspielen, die sich auf eigenständige musikalische Weise jenen Kategorien annähert, die auch für Tarkowski von künstlerischer Relevanz waren: poetische Etüden als subtile, klanglich höchst virtuose Auseinandersetzungen mit Zeit, Raum und Erinnerungen, mit fremden Gedanken- und Gefühlswelten, die sich mit den eigenen (und eigenständigen) Vorstellungen zu einer mal filigran-stimmungsreichen, mal vertrackt-wuchtigen Klanwelt verdichten.
Horst Peter Koll, Filmdienst
… album extraordinaire par sa couleur, son intensité, ses dérives autour des titres et des images mentales du cinéaste Andrei Tarkovsky…
Francis Marmande, Le Monde
Musik für einen Film, der nie gedreht wurde. […] Das Quartet setzt die Arbeit des Regisseurs fort. Die russische Seele trifft auf eine französische Schwermut, die vom Cello der deutschen Anja Lechner stimmungsvoll unterstrichen wird. Manchmal verharrt die Musik auf der Stelle und hört sich dann tatsächlich wie Filmmusik ohne Film an.
Welf Grömbacher, Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung
Ombres lumineuses et lumières noires, évocations de la musique sacrée et échos de la musique profane, frissons fébriles d’un accordéon et cordes sensibles du violoncelle, libres improvisations et variations autour de Chostakovitch. Essentiel.
Jacques Denis, Jazz News
“Tarkovsky Quartet” reunites the group from “Nostalghia”, and wraps up Couturier’s trilogy of Tarkovsky-inspired recordings on notes both strong and sublime. As poignant as Couturier’s writing is, it’s his use of these four instruments, in arrangements that seamlessly explore various permutations and combinations – solo, duo, trio and quartet, ofthen within the context of a single piece – that gives “Tarkovsky Quartet” its rarefied air. The blending of two reeds, Marché’s saxophone and Matinier’s accordion, creates an irresistible symbiosis – comingled with the expressive tone of bow on string, and given rhythmic life by Couturier on tracks like the hauntin “Tiapa”, there’s even greater synchronicity amongst the four musicians than on “Nostalghia”. If ”Tarkovsky Quartet” is, indeed, an ending, then hopefully it doesn’t mean the dissolution of this remarkable group, whose seamless integration of timeless autoschediastic élan with classical concerns from centuries past has them carving out a personal space in the realm of contemporary improvised music.
John Kelman, All about jazz
On ira méditer dans les interstices de cette musique ajourée.
Éric Dehaye, Vibrations
Mit neun Eigenkompositionen von François Couturier und drei Gruppenimprovisationen wird der Hörer in eine wunderschöne Welt meist melancholisch gefärbter Bilder entführt, die dem konzentrierten Connaisseur bei jedem Hören neue Fassetten eröffnen. […] Couturier ließ sich bei einigen seiner Stücke aber auch von Bach, Pergolesi oder Schostakowitsch inspirieren, und es wird deutlich, dass ihn sein Angesiedelt-Sein in Jazz, Klassik, Weltmusik und vor allem auch in der zeitgenössischen Kammermusik zu großartigen, alle Genregrenzen sprengenden Projekten befähigt.
Zeitschrift für Kultur und Gesellschaft
The music on this album, with ist suite like sequence of compositions that flow like a cinematic reverie, comes across as a film-like invitation to a voyage. The spare, gently unfolding and intensely atmospheric melodies and moods deliver an invitation to listen with open ears … and to dream. Couturier has delivered a wondrous offering with compositions that open a path to a secret world.
Nenad Georgievski, All about jazz
Il faut la caresse des cordes, l’aménité d’un soufflet, les vibrations sur la pointe des pieds d’un saxophone pour rendre aussi concret que possible la prophétie de Tarkovsky qui déclarait l’âme immortelle. Dans ce troisième volet majesteusement enregistré à l’Auditorium RSI de Lugano, François Couturier confirme sa trajectoire de l’autre côté du miroir, là où l’esprit se convertit en musique.
Guy Darol, Jazz Magazine
“It is to a true inner world that François Couturier and the Tarkovsky Quartet with Anja Lechner, Jean-Louis Matinier and Jean-Marc Larché 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... In which the pulse, like the beating of a heart, and the most imperceptible sounds sketch out a world in which the soul may soar with its entreaty and its dreams. Huge wings unfold, stretch out and close again. The image of dancers comes to mind. A whole protected interior space of long drawn out silences, in which, miraculously, improvisation remains sovereign. This is probably what brings us closest to the 'absolute freedom of the spiritual potential of man' which Andrei Tarkovsky regarded as the essential function of art.”
Charles H. de Brantes, Director of the Andrey Tarkovsky International Institute
*
Following on from “Nostalghia – Song for Tarkovsky” (2005) and the solo piano album “Un jour si blanc” (2009), this new recording, made in the responsive acoustic of the Auditorium RSI in Lugano, completes a trilogy for François Couturier. It also opens a new door for his quartet, known henceforth as the Tarkovsky Quartet.
The work of filmmaker Andrei Tarkovksy (1932-1986) continues to provide inspiration for the pianist, and his compositions here are packed with allusions to Tarkovsy’s life and art. In a liner note, Charles de Brantes illuminates some of these references, pointing out that the titles of the twelve pieces heard here themselves constitute a series of tributes.
“A celui qui a vu la’ange”, for instance, is an epitaph inscribed on Tarkovsky’s tombstone. “Tiapa” and “Maroussia” were Tarkovsky’s affectionate nicknames for his youngest son and his mother. “Myshkin” is named for the Dostoyevskyan prince whom Tarkovsky often spoke of as an apt film subject. “San Galano” is the ruined abbey in “Nostalghia. “Mouchette” was Tarkovsky’s favourite Bresson film, and “Doktor Faustus” the Thomas Mann novel that he longed make into a movie. Tarkovsky wrote the screenplay for the Tajik Western “Sardor”, but never filmed it. “La passion selon Andrei” was the original title of Tarkovsky’s historical masterpiece . “L’Apocalypse”, last book of the Bible (Revelation), is a frequent reference in Tarkovky’s last three films, “La main et le oiseau” (The hand and the bird) “feature in the brief scene in ‘The Mirror’ which Tarkovsky later referred to as his self-portrait. This leads, finally to “De l’autre côté du miroir”, the other side of the mirror: through the looking glass toward other destinations for the imagination.
“San Galagno”, “Sardor” and “Le main et l’oiseau” are collective improvisations by Couturier, Lechner, Larché and Matinier, their musical depth testimony to the way in which the group has developed in the last five years. All other pieces are composed by Couturier, who points out that “A celui qui a vu l'ange” is inspired by "Qui est homo" from Pergolesi's "Stabat mater" and “Maroussia” by Johann Sebastian Bach's “Das alte Jahr vergangen ist”. “La passion selon Andreï” references "Herr, unser Herrscher” from Bach's “Johannespassion”, and “Doktor Faustus” makes allusions to Shostakovitch's Sonata for violoncello and piano, op. 40.
*
Standing in the foreground is a musicality nourished at other wellsprings. Couturier, born near Orléans in 1950, has played with jazz musicians and is equally at home with avant-garde improvisers or oud player Anouar Brahem. Along the way, in various formations, he met Jean-Louis Matinier and Jean-Marc Larché. The cellist Anja Lechner moves just as freely across musical boundaries. She feels as closely attuned to Dino Saluzzi as to Misha Alperin or Gurdjieff, to whom she dedicated the moving Chants, Hymns and Dances… It is their attitude that has brought them together, not their backgrounds.
Konrad Heidkamp, writing in Die Zeit in 2006
Charles H. de Brantes, Director of the Andrey Tarkovsky International Institute
*
Following on from “Nostalghia – Song for Tarkovsky” (2005) and the solo piano album “Un jour si blanc” (2009), this new recording, made in the responsive acoustic of the Auditorium RSI in Lugano, completes a trilogy for François Couturier. It also opens a new door for his quartet, known henceforth as the Tarkovsky Quartet.
The work of filmmaker Andrei Tarkovksy (1932-1986) continues to provide inspiration for the pianist, and his compositions here are packed with allusions to Tarkovsy’s life and art. In a liner note, Charles de Brantes illuminates some of these references, pointing out that the titles of the twelve pieces heard here themselves constitute a series of tributes.
“A celui qui a vu la’ange”, for instance, is an epitaph inscribed on Tarkovsky’s tombstone. “Tiapa” and “Maroussia” were Tarkovsky’s affectionate nicknames for his youngest son and his mother. “Myshkin” is named for the Dostoyevskyan prince whom Tarkovsky often spoke of as an apt film subject. “San Galano” is the ruined abbey in “Nostalghia. “Mouchette” was Tarkovsky’s favourite Bresson film, and “Doktor Faustus” the Thomas Mann novel that he longed make into a movie. Tarkovsky wrote the screenplay for the Tajik Western “Sardor”, but never filmed it. “La passion selon Andrei” was the original title of Tarkovsky’s historical masterpiece . “L’Apocalypse”, last book of the Bible (Revelation), is a frequent reference in Tarkovky’s last three films, “La main et le oiseau” (The hand and the bird) “feature in the brief scene in ‘The Mirror’ which Tarkovsky later referred to as his self-portrait. This leads, finally to “De l’autre côté du miroir”, the other side of the mirror: through the looking glass toward other destinations for the imagination.
“San Galagno”, “Sardor” and “Le main et l’oiseau” are collective improvisations by Couturier, Lechner, Larché and Matinier, their musical depth testimony to the way in which the group has developed in the last five years. All other pieces are composed by Couturier, who points out that “A celui qui a vu l'ange” is inspired by "Qui est homo" from Pergolesi's "Stabat mater" and “Maroussia” by Johann Sebastian Bach's “Das alte Jahr vergangen ist”. “La passion selon Andreï” references "Herr, unser Herrscher” from Bach's “Johannespassion”, and “Doktor Faustus” makes allusions to Shostakovitch's Sonata for violoncello and piano, op. 40.
*
Standing in the foreground is a musicality nourished at other wellsprings. Couturier, born near Orléans in 1950, has played with jazz musicians and is equally at home with avant-garde improvisers or oud player Anouar Brahem. Along the way, in various formations, he met Jean-Louis Matinier and Jean-Marc Larché. The cellist Anja Lechner moves just as freely across musical boundaries. She feels as closely attuned to Dino Saluzzi as to Misha Alperin or Gurdjieff, to whom she dedicated the moving Chants, Hymns and Dances… It is their attitude that has brought them together, not their backgrounds.
Konrad Heidkamp, writing in Die Zeit in 2006
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