Inventio is a duo album by the French accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier and the Italian nyckelharpa player Marco Ambrosini, two musicians who have taken their instruments far from folk convention. Their programme sets arrangements of Bach, Biber and Pergolesi among pieces of their own. The title comes from Bach's Invention No. 4, which they play here, a piece written to teach students how to develop a musical idea.
Ambrosini is one of very few musicians who play the nyckelharpa, the keyed fiddle of Swedish folk music, outside that tradition. He has a long history with the early music consort Oni Wytars and had appeared on ECM with Rolf Lislevand. Matinier, born in Nevers in 1963, first drew attention as a soloist in the Orchestre National de Jazz at the end of the 1980s. He has accompanied Juliette Gréco since 1999 and recorded for ECM with Anouar Brahem, Louis Sclavis and the Tarkovsky Quartet of François Couturier. Inventio was recorded in April 2013 at the Auditorio of Radiotelevisione svizzera in Lugano and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Most of the originals are by Matinier, among them Wiosna, Hommage and Kochanie Moje. Ambrosini wrote Basse Dance and Tasteggiata 2, and the first Tasteggiata is credited to both. The baroque pieces are spread through the sequence rather than grouped, so that the Bach Presto comes straight after Matinier's brief Szybko. Ambrosini alone arranged the Presto from Bach's G minor violin sonata, BWV 1001, and the Praeludium from Biber's first Rosary Sonata. Qui est homo comes from Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, and the pair move between arrangement, composition and improvisation without marking the borders. The album closes with a Siciliènne by André Astier.
For Shaun Brady in DownBeat, "the pair flows effortlessly from baroque to classical music to folk tunes to spare improvisation to cinematic sweep, all of it stark and lovely". In the German magazine Fono Forum, Mario-Felix Vogt heard traces of tango nuevo and minimal music in the improvisations, and was reminded of Astor Piazzolla by Matinier's playing.
CD, ECM 2348, released in May 2014. Fifteen pieces, made in collaboration with RSI Rete Due, Lugano.
