François Couturier
Dominique Pifarély
Preludes and Songs

Dominique Pifarély violin
François Couturier piano
Recorded October 2023, Historischer Reistadel, Neumarkt
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Mixed April 2024 by Manfred Eicher and Michael Hinreiner (engineer)
at Bavaria Musikstudios, Munich
Cover photo: Woong Chul An
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: January 24, 2025

What threw us
together,
shrieks apart,
a worldstone, sun-distant,
hums.
–Paul Celan

The last duo session for ECM from pianist François Couturier and Dominique Pifarély was recorded in 1997 (Poros). Since then, these musicians have paved roads uniquely their own in span and material across the label’s catalog, but always with each other in sight. For this reunion, they explore an absorbing melange of originals and standards. Of the latter, we are treated to characteristically shifting interpretations of Jacques Brel’s “La chanson des vieux amants” and George Gershwin’s “I Loves You Porgy.” Pifarély’s instrument cuts a figure struggling to hold its shape in the wavering heat, its microtonal plasticity yielding haunting textures. Equal parts lyrical and contortional, both tunes find kindred company in Manning Sherwin’s “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley,” which manages to stay soulful throughout every twist and turn. With a touch of rain and softness on the horizon, it sings of clearer and brighter days before giving way to Pifarély’s “Les ombres II,” a spiral staircase turned inside out. Its counterpart, “Les ombres I,” begins the album with string-forward resolve, morphing into a reflective take on J. J. Johnson’s “Lament,” which barely disturbs the water’s surface before it fades. Further highlights abound in the violinist’s “Vague” and “What Us.” By turns brooding and whimsical, they prove that contemplation isn’t always pretty—nor must it be, until the decorations of hindsight fall into hand. Couturier’s colorations are astute and adaptive throughout. From pressing chords to baptismal sprinklings, there is much to savor. His own “Le surcroît I” and “Le surcroît II” cut against the grain of reality in the most intriguing way, time capsules of impressions saying only what needs to be said, while “Song for Harrison” (co-composed with Pifarély and named for Couturier’s cocker spaniel) playfully breaks into Duke Ellington’s “Solitude” for an artful contrast of layers. Each is a cipher that also serves as its solution, spinning the cryptex into new possibilities with every listen.