Klaus Paier & Asja Valcic - A Deux (2009) & Silk Road (2013) / Contemporary Jazz, Chamber Music, Tango

When Vienna's radio.string.quartet played in London last year, Croatian cellist Asja Valcic's playing was the powerhouse of the band, with its jazz-bassist's forward-leaning drive and percussive accents. Those qualities surface again on some attractive and songlike originals by the accordion and bandoneon-player Klaus Paier. For a performer raised on chamber music, Valcic has taken to jazz with an assertive vigour that is still quite rare among classical converts, and Paier unblinkingly switches between swirling cafe-waltzes and a thundering energy like Joe Zawinul's at the organ. Valcic's busy, pulsating rhythms and hand-drum effects alternate with delicate lyricism on Tango Loco, and her pizzicato walks swap with the plunging Mahavishnu-like countermelody in the swinging title track. Some of the pieces are breezy dances (Cici, Valsa Francaise) some are balletic tangos, some have a church-organ ruminativeness (Some Days, Sentiment Pour le Beau) and some a clamorous Balkan energy. For jazzers, improvisation may be a little hampered by this music's tight arrangements and familiar song-forms, but it's a lovely combination of instruments, and virtuosically executed.



With most contemporary European offshoots of jazz it's impossible to tell where composition leaves off and improvisation begins. That's certainly the case with this duo of an Austrian accordionist and Croatian cellist. The instruments blend so elegantly, and the 11 pieces evolve with such vigour and clarity, that the music sounds like the product of one mind rather than two. If it reminds me of anything, it's the work of Astor Piazzolla, with its tangos and waltzes, especially when Paier switches from accordion to bandoneón – but really its charm is all its own.