The music on "Souvenance" is graceful, hypnotic, taut and starkly dramatic, reflecting the political upheaval sweeping oud-master Anouar Brahem's homeland of Tunisia and its neighbouring countries. Joining Brahem is his frequent collaborator, French pianist François Couturier, supported by subtle string orchestration from the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana and conductor Pietro Mianiti. The strings have a glowing transparency and fragility in these pieces, often providing shimmering texture against which the contributions of the quartet members and, above all, Brahem’s unique oud-playing, stand out in bold relief.

"Il Pergolese" pays tribute to 18th century composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710 – 1736), and considers his relationship to the art music and the popular music of Naples, from a highly contemporary perspective. The text of the Stabat Mater – translated into Neapolitan by Maria Pia De Vito – and the opera arias, are transformed into songs and vivid narrative, open frames providing the key to reinterpreting Pergolesi. François Couturier's arrangements widen Pergolesi's structures, offering space for improvisational interaction. But this is a real group project, a discourse among acoustic sounds, with rhythms of drums and metals, and sampled and real-time electronics. Sound textures grow dense with the richness of instrumental counterpoint or are set free in electronic soundscapes and along coloristic, percussive lines, as cello becomes voice or voice becomes an instrument. The project was commissioned by the Festival Pergolesi-Spontini of Jesi in 2011. The present version was recorded in Lugano in December 2012, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

After a decade of shared work in the Tarkovsky Quartet and an ongoing alliance in the Pergolesi Project (with singer Maria Pia De Vito), German cellist Anja Lechner and French pianist François Couturier unveil their new duo. ECM New Series.

François Couturier leads his Tarkovsky Quartet on their third album dedicated to the great film director Andrej Tarkovsky. The two previous volumes, released in 2006 and 2011, were greeted with unanimous international praise; the musical and human experience during the recordings and subsequent tours and concerts revealing the huge potential of the highly original formation consisting of piano, cello, saxophone and accordion.