Kultrum

Dino Saluzzi, Rosamunde Quartett

The "Kultrum" collaboration between Argentian bandoneon master Dino Saluzzi and the Munich-based German-Austrian-Australian Rosamunde Quartett was initiated in 1996. Featuring Saluzzi’s chamber music for bandoneon and string quartet, Kultrum is both a "departure" and an extension of Dino’s previous ECM recordings in which he acknowledges and then transgresses the boundaries: between composition and improvisation, between so-called serious and popular music, between folk music and jazz and tango. The project has already toured in Europe, to critical and public acclaim, and there is every indication that its appeal will prove very broad-based indeed.

Featured Artists Recorded

March 1998, Propstei St. Gerold

Original Release Date

19.10.1998

  • Kultrum - Música para Bandeón y Cuarteto de Cuerda
    (Dino Saluzzi)
  • 1Cruz del Sur10:12
  • 2Salón de tango05:03
  • 3Milonga de los morenos03:09
  • 4...Y solos - bajo una luna amarilla - discuten sobre el pasado08:42
  • 5Miserere06:58
  • 6El apriete12:40
  • 7...Y se encaminó hacia el destierro07:31
  • 8Recitativo final05:57
Saluzzi´s eminently listenable but uncompromised compositions draw an his own diverse background in tango, chamber music and avant-garde jazz; the result is evocative of all of these. Excitement, poignancy, virtuosity and sheer emotional strength permeate these eight pieces. (…) The uniqueness of this disc, among the best recordings I´ve heard this year, is paramount. Highly recommended.
Roger Thomas, Gramophone, Editor´s Choice
 
Der Tango bleibt für Dino Saluzzi zwar ein wichtiger Bezugspunkt, doch löst er sich mit einer derartigen Freigeistigkeit von ihm, dass er zuweilen nur noch wie von ferne her erkennbar ist. Gleich in welche Richtung Saluzzi sich gerade wendet, seine Musik ist von einer kristallinen Klarheit. (...) Als Musiker lässt Saluzzi eine existenzielle Tiefe auf unaufdringliche Weise spüren. Jeglicher Zug von Sentiment ist ihm dabei fremd. Mit dem gleichermaßen in der Klassik und Romantik wie der klassischen Moderne erfahrenen Rosamunde-Quartett hat er fabelhafte Partner zu einem unangestrengten Zusammenspielt gefunden.
Stefan Michalzik, Frankfurter Rundschau
 
The density of texture and invention is immediately arresting. Snatches of German Romanticism blend into traditional gestures: the presence of the tango is deeply felt but mostly subsumed into sinous narrative and the anguished harmonies of turn-of-the-century Vienna. Throughout, the string players, all exceptionally fine, produce a timbral bloom which cloaks the bandoneon´s metallic keening in softness. Saluzzi has an array of colours, from orchestral powered to an almost broken fragility. His genius presides, with the dignity, discipline and the very spirit of the dance.
Helen Wallace, BBC Music Magazine
 
The Kultrum collaboration between Argentinian bandoneon master Dino Saluzzi and the Munich-based German-Austrian-Australian Rosamunde Quartet was initiated in 1996. Featuring Saluzzi's chamber music for bandoneon and string quartet, Kultrum is both a "departure" and an extension of Dino's previous ECM recordings (in fact the title echoes that of his first disc for the label), in which - as Swiss critic Peter Rüedi has noted - he acknowledges and then transgresses the boundaries: between composition and improvisation, between so-called serious and popular music, between folk music and jazz and tango.

The genesis of the project, however, can be traced back specifically to Saluzzi's solo album Andina of 1988 and a small piece added as a postscript to that session. The sound of the bandoneon on "Memories" seemed to imply a wave of orchestration, and the suggestion that a string quartet could bring this out more fully was left for Saluzzi to ponder.

In the interim, the Rosamunde Quartet - whose tastes are unusually comprehensive for a classical ensemble - raised Saluzzi's name among a list of enthusiasms from Haydn to Nono in the course of production discussions with ECM. A Munich concert by the Saluzzi Trio provided an opportunity for Dino and cellist Anja Lechner to meet and exchange ideas and in June 1996, the Saluzzi-Rosamunde collective began rehearsing together.

Saluzzi insists that tango players would have been inadequate interpreters of his new music. "I needed freedom from the tango form. At the same time, I also feel responsibility to conserve the tradition, and it's dangerous to move, but we have to move." Not least to defend the territory from the numerous classical players claiming Argentine inspirations this season - now that Piazzolla is safely dead!

The Kultrum project has toured over the last two years, to critical and public acclaim, as Saluzzi and the quartet have honed the material. A few days before the recording at the Austrian monastery of St Gerold (site of such significant New Series recordings as the Jan Garbarek/Hilliard Ensemble Officium album, Giya Kancheli's Exil, Paul Giger's Schattenwelt, Michelle Makarski's Caoine and Eduard Brunner's Dal Niente), the collective played an ecstatically-received concert at Munich's Prinzregententheater.