ECM 2026 o Anja Lechner o Nils Økland/Sigbjørn Apeland

The event originally planned at the Augustian museum Freiburg is being moved for organizational reasons to the wonderful St. Lioba Monastery in Freiburg-Günterstal.

The event originally planned at the Augustian museum Freiburg is being moved for organizational reasons to the wonderful St. Lioba Monastery in Freiburg-Günterstal.

Anja Lechner o Cello (Solo)
Nils Økland/Sigbjørn Apeland (Hardanger Fiddle & Harmonium)

Bach is at the center of Anja Lechner's first ECM solo album; and that in all modesty. Because Anja Lechner's Bach playing is not one thing: eccentric. Unlike many of her (male) colleagues, she doesn't come out and say: "Let's see what I as an interpreter can get out of these beacons of the repertoire. In terms of subtleties, rhetorical finesse, crassness of all kinds. Lechner bows to Bach, and she does so with a highly concentrated, very poetic naturalness. A cello tone like a fire in the night: warm, sensual, unagitated, free. And yet with Anja Lechner you can hear how intensively she has studied historical performance practice, how much early music she knows and plays and how much new and completely new music. And that she has mastered the art of improvisation and has always improvised on the cello. Nothing in her playing is thoughtless or merely random or coincidental - and yet it sounds like music made in the moment. [...] Five stars for this quiet, magnificent recording that invites you to contemplate the music and yourself.

Christine Lemke-Matwey, Südwestrundfunk

The cellist Anja Lechner has been such a bright star on the ECM firmament, that it's hard to believe this is her first solo album for the label. Having engaged with musical traditions including tango, Armenian folk songs and Byzantine hymns, she now mines the deeply personal repertoire of viola da gamba music to reframe some of the most treasured works written for cello. Using a Baroque bow and a modern cello, Lechner brings the sighing, ruminative quality of a viola da gamba to some of the darker pages of Bach's First and Second Cello Suites. In lyrical passages, the cello's silky sound billows and yields as if controlled by breath; in fast movements, her articulation is airy and fleet.

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times

Violinist Nils Økland and keyboardist Sigbjørn Apeland, musical partners for thirty years, have long explored the intersection of traditional Norwegian music and improvisation. Glimmer, an exceptionally beautiful album, takes the folk music of the Haugalandet region of western Norway as its starting point. Apeland's collection of pieces by local singers who have helped to keep the traditions alive forms the basis of the repertoire here, along with original compositions. The latter range from pieces written for a film about Lars Hertevig, the great Norwegian landscape painter of the 19th century, to music inspired by the modernist composer Fartein Valen. The combination of Økland's Hardanger fiddle and Apeland's harmonium is characterized by subtle timbres and a unique flow.