Georges I. Gurdjieff, Federico Mompou, Anja Lechner, François Couturier

Moderato cantabile is the first duo album by German cellist Anja Lechner and French pianist François Couturier, after a decade together in the Tarkovsky Quartet. They come at the music from opposite sides. Lechner is a classical soloist with an unusual interest in improvisation, Couturier a jazz musician who has moved steadily away from jazz. Here they play their own arrangements of three outsiders of music history, G.I. Gurdjieff, Komitas and Federico Mompou, alongside three Couturier originals.

The album was recorded in November 2013 at the Auditorio of Radiotelevisione svizzera in Lugano, in collaboration with RSI Rete Due. Manfred Eicher produced, Stefano Amerio engineered, and Steve Lake wrote the liner notes. The pair had also worked together in the Pergolesi Project with singer Maria Pia De Vito. Lechner had already recorded Gurdjieff's music with Vassilis Tsabropoulos on Chants, Hymns and Dances, and time spent in Armenia had deepened her sense of where these melodies come from. Couturier has a long history with Mompou's piano music, and his work with Anouar Brahem left Middle Eastern colours in his playing.

All three composers drew in different ways on the East, on folk song, religious music or philosophy, and a contemplative mood holds the programme together. Lechner's cello often takes the part of a singer. In Komitas's Chinar es she draws out the old Armenian folk melody over rolling piano arpeggios. Couturier's Voyage unfolds over a ground bass, with the cello floating above, while Soleil rouge and Papillons are more pointed and rhythmically restless. Near the end, Gurdjieff's No. 11, written with Thomas de Hartmann, runs straight into Mompou's Fêtes lointaines no. 3. The disc closes on Mompou's Secreto, the eighth of his Impresiones intimas.

Reviewers heard a record that sits between genres. Writing in Aesthetica, Hannah Clugston noted that Lechner's "instrument leads the melody as a voice carrying a song". Rick Anderson, in CD Hotlist, put it plainly: "this isn't really either a jazz album or a classical one. What it really is is an ECM New Series album". John Kelman of All About Jazz praised how diverse yet homogeneous the programme sounds, and Musical America picked out Voyage and Chinar es among the highlights.

CD edition of ECM New Series 2367, first released on 5 September 2014, with a 24-page booklet.