FRANÇOIS COUTURIER
/ DOMINIQUE PIFARÉLY “Preludes and Songs”

ARTIST

François Couturier / Dominique Pifarély

ALBUM TITLE

“Preludes and Songs”

LABEL

ECM

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The piano–violin duo is a classic format – at least on paper – and it has appeared often enough in jazz. From the elegant exchanges between McCoy Tyner and Stéphane Grappelli to the avant-garde conversations of Muhal Richard Abrams and Leroy Jenkins, the lineage is well established. More recently, Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri’s Transylvanian Dance on ECM offered one of last year’s most powerful encounters, blending folk traditions with improvisation. Yet the equation shifts when the players are François Couturier and Dominique Pifarély.

The French pianist and violinist have been linked for over four decades, beginning in the early 1980s with Didier Levallet’s Swing String System. Since then, they have crossed paths in numerous projects, including Poros (1997, ECM). But Preludes and Songs is not merely a continuation of that earlier work – it is a new beginning. “We wanted to start from where each of us was during this long break,” Pifarély explains. “We had to listen very closely to one another’s musical personality, because in the meantime we had developed different ideas and forms.”

Couturier, classically trained yet independent in spirit, moves fluidly between genres: jazz and world music (notably with oud master Anouar Brahem), fusion (with John McLaughlin), and chamber contexts (his Tarkovsky Quartet, inspired by the atmosphere of filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky). Pifarély, for his part, has worked with key figures in French jazz such as Eddy Louiss and Louis Sclavis, while also contributing his violin to projects with Mike Westbrook, Tim Berne, Rabih Abou-Khalil, and Stefano Battaglia. A relentless experimenter, he is obsessively attuned to timbre and nuance.

All of this feeds into Preludes and Songs, recorded in the historic Reitstadel concert hall in Neumarkt, Germany, a space famed for its acoustics. The hall captures every subtle inflection of sound, giving the music its crystalline presence. The album’s preludes – two by Couturier, two by Pifarély, plus additional works including the shadowy Vague and What Us – are set against “songs” that often draw on the jazz repertoire. Fragments emerge and dissolve into the duo’s explorations: J.J. Johnson’s Lament surfaces at the end of Les Ombres I; Ellington’s Solitude drifts behind Song for Harrison. Gershwin’s I Loves You, Porgy closes the program. Perhaps the most affecting moment is Jacques Brel’s La chanson des vieux amants: after a calm piano introduction, the violin gradually unveils the melody, leaving it suspended and unresolved.

The result is an album poised between chamber improvisation and contemporary music, where nothing is predictable and fresh details reveal themselves with each listen. A work of quiet daring, Preludes and Songs reflects the depth of a partnership that still has much to say.

—Ivo Franchi

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