For those unaware, Transylvanian Dance (due out on August 30th, 2024 via ECM) takes as its starting point transcriptions of folk songs and dance tunes collected by Béla Bartók a century ago.

For Romanian Pianist Lucian Ban and American Violist Mat Maneri, these pieces have become “springboards and sources of melodic material” for performances “that capture the spirit of the original yet allow us to improvise and bring our own world to them…”.

Ban explains: “In our process we don’t have any preconceived notions of how we should arrange these songs. Some take a very improvisational approach. Some are more defined compositionally and harmonically. And others combine the folk material with original motives of ours. If you go deeper into the source material, new vistas are opening.”

Recorded live in October 2022 in the context of the Retracing Bartók project in Timișoara, the album also bears testimony to the finely attuned understanding that Ban and Maneri have achieved in their long-running musical partnership.

1. Poor Is My Heart
2. Romanian Folk Dance
3. Lover Mine Of Long Ago
4. Transylvanian Dance
5. The Enchanted Stag
6. Harvest Moon Ballad
7. The Boyar’s Doina
8. Make Me, Lord, Slim And Tall

Recorded live in Timișoara, Romania, in October 2022, the duo’s second album for ECM opens on the veritably translucent Poor Is My Heart and then we get the cloistered furtiveness of Romanian Folk Dance, the aching yearn within Lover Mine Of Long Ago and the jaunty title track Transylvanian Dance.

Along next is the wistful The Enchanted Stag which is itself backed seamlessly by the dreamy Harvest Moon Ballad, the recording rounding out on the dulcet orchestrations that drive The Boyar’s Doina, closing on the apprehensively disconsolate, yet threaded with hope, Make Me, Lord, Slim And Tall.

Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri bring the music of Transylvanian Dance on the road in the months ahead, with concerts on both sides of the Atlantic.

www.lucianban.com

Mat Maneri @ Twitter