Klaus Paier and Asja Valcic - A Deux

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.