Bach – Abel – Hume

As similar as they first appear (and often sound), the viola da gamba and cello are from different sides of the instrumental family tree. The gamba, with its fretted fingerboard, emerged in 15th-century Spain, while the cello was born into the violin family around the 1660s. In her imaginatively conceived and beautifully executed album, Anja Lechner blurs this often confusing distinction, playing her recital of cello and gamba music entirely on a modern cello, but using a Baroque bow. The result is a uniformity of sound from Abel and Hume’s music for gamba to Bach’s suites for cello, all without throwing authenticity completely out of the window. Anja Lechner begins her album with three short pieces by Tobias Hume, a 17th-century Scottish mercenary and part-time composer. Lechner revels in their rhapsodic nature, each phrase of A Question and An Answer suffused with so much expressive possibility. The quiet exhortation of Harke, Harke is punctated by what would have been at the time the avant-garde effects of pizzicato (plucking the strings) and col legno (playing them with the wooden part of the bow), techniques both pioneered by Hume himself. In Lechner’s hands, German composer Abel’s feathery Arpeggio in D Minor, which comes in from the gloom of Harke, Harke, is surprisingly modern, its harmonic progress sometimes impossible to second-guess. The ensuing Adagio has all the expressivity of Bach’s Cello Suites, the first two of which are played immediately after, performed with a limpidity that celebrates each and every note and phrase. We end with more of Hume’s gamba works—after 40 minutes or so of Bach, their untethered and delightful lyricism is a refreshing digestif. Inside the Album Booklet ECM’s album booklets are, on the whole, magnificently insightful—the accompanying essay here is no exception, giving a window onto the nature of Lechner’s program as well as her performing methodology. Album booklets are available in the latest version of Apple Music Classical, which you can download and enjoy as part of your Apple Music subscription. To access booklets, tap on the book icon at the top of your screen.