CD ECM Records Dino Saluzzi, Anja Lechner: El Encuentro

2010

Dino Saluzzi - bandoneon
Anja Lechner - violoncel
Felix Saluzzi - saxofon tenor
The Metropole Orchestra , dirijor Jules Buckley

Dino Saluzzi:
- Vals De Los Dias
- Plegaria Andina
- El Encuentro
- Miserere

Dino Saluzzi’s new music for orchestra and soloists characteristically glides through the borders between the idioms. A Saluzzi composition can, from one minute to the next, be “serious”, “popular”, “traditional”, “experimental -, even if these style divisions barely exist for a bandoneonist who prefers to see his work as “simply an expression of innocence”. “El Encuentro” was recorded live in Amsterdam with the Metropole Orchestra in February 2009 and is issued in time for Dino’s 75th birthday in May.

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Impossible perhaps to consider Saluzzi’s work without mention of fellow Argentinian composer Astor Piazolla but it’s the differences that are instructive. Saluzzi’s music lacks Piazzolla’s filmic quality and perhaps relies less on local forms. But these are strengths and the source of Saluzzi’s success in this magnificently atmospheric work. It’s an essay in form. The key lies in the composition itself – in its architecture, its use of colours and textures and the way it plays with form to fashion something of exquisite beauty.
Duncan Heining, Jazzwise

The Argentinian master Dino Saluzzi’s bandoneon and Anja Lechner’s cello fold sensuously into one another on this primarily classical venture, but the emphasis is on the Metropole Orchestra’s strings as they flesh out Saluzzi’s love-and-loss lyricism, wistful waltzes and rugged atmospherics.
John Fordham, The Guardian