Dino Saluzzi, Rosamunde Quartett

Kultrum is a set of eight pieces for bandoneon and string quartet by the Argentine bandoneonist and composer Dino Saluzzi, played by Saluzzi with the Munich-based Rosamunde Quartett. Released on ECM New Series, it takes its title from his first ECM album of 1983. The music moves freely between composition and improvisation, and between tango, folk music, jazz and the European chamber tradition, without settling into any one of them.

The idea goes back to Andina, Saluzzi's solo album of 1988. A short postscript to that session suggested orchestral colours in the bandoneon, and the thought of strings bringing them out was left open. The quartet had named Saluzzi among its interests in talks with ECM, and a Saluzzi Trio concert in Munich brought him together with cellist Anja Lechner. Rehearsals began in June 1996, and the group toured Europe before recording. The quartet here is Andreas Reiner and Simon Fordham on violins, Helmut Nicolai on viola and Lechner on cello. The album was recorded in March 1998 at the Propstei St. Gerold in Austria, engineered by Markus Heiland and produced by Manfred Eicher.

The opening Cruz del Sur, over ten minutes long, sets the method: the strings are woven into the bandoneon's sound, alternating rustling textures with long held stillness. Salón de tango keeps the dance close but drifts into wide, slow harmonies. Miserere builds from pizzicato statements into dense fugal writing, and the twelve-minute El apriete brings back warmth and movement before the darker ...Y se encaminó hacia el destierro and the closing Recitativo final. The duo passages between Saluzzi and Lechner point ahead to the partnership the two would later continue on their own ECM albums.

Reviews were enthusiastic. Roger Thomas made it a Gramophone Editor's Choice, hearing "excitement, poignancy, virtuosity and sheer emotional strength" in the eight pieces. In BBC Music Magazine Helen Wallace noted how the string players "produce a timbral bloom which cloaks the bandoneon's metallic keening in softness", with the tango "deeply felt but mostly subsumed" into the narrative. She also called the album "a rare and beautiful animal".

This is the CD edition of ECM New Series 1638, first released in October 1998.