François Couturier & Tarkovsky Quartet
Biography François Couturier & Tarkovsky Quartet
Tarkovsky Quartet
Following on from the ECM recordings “Nostalghia – Song for Tarkovsky” (2006), the solo piano album “Un jour si blanc” (2009), and “Tarkovsky Quartet” (2011), François Couturier continues to compose music of compelling beauty for his original Tarkovsky Quartet. He continues to draw inspiration from films, but has now expanded his frame of reference.
This time, delving into and reflecting the aspect and dimension of the ‘dreamlike’ in works of cinema (the eerie phenomenon of uncertain distinction between real and imaginary, or what André Breton might call a sort of ‘surréalité’), Couturier refers to masterworks by filmmakers such as Akira Kurosawa, Luchino Visconti, Ingmar Bergman, ... and, of course, revered Andrey Tarkovsky.
François Couturier has absorbed and brilliantly set to music the poetic abundance of extraordinary scenes and chimeric characters of that particular film universe. It is once again new original chamber music with its unmistakably own and unique sound texture: very distinct, distinguished, emotionally profound compositions, enriched by compelling, creative collective improvisations.
“Mixing classical rigour with improvisation both formal and free, what emerges is austerely beautiful, etched in sombre hues and redolent of an unslakeable thirst to connect with a deeper well of the spirit.” (Irish Times on earlier “Nostalghia - Song for Tarkovsky”).
