Kein Schöner Land
	Leuchter - Melrose
	Music Records – Germania, 2011
	06 February 2012

Kein Schöner Land

Here is a CD that is "fascinating" and at the same time, stimulating and "instructive" offered by German accordionist Manfred Leuchter in acoustic duo with the guitarist (fingerstyle!) Ian Melrose.

The two musicians are also the composers and arrangers of almost all the tracks on the CD and have designed a varied program that takes us ... literally on a travel through time and space, across genres and musical styles that are very different, yet linked by a significant, albeit invisible, "red line".

This exciting journey begins with the title track from the CD (which, in another version, also ends the program), a piece based on an old German folk tune and continued with songs from particular ethnic flavors, inspired by countries of the Middle East that have been visited by Leuchter (like the songs Mekong and Ramallah). Other striking pieces are built on ancient grounds of the seventeenth century Europe (as in tracks 4 - 5) or the eighteenth century Europe (track 8).For tracks 11 and 12, surprisingly Leuchter proposes a fairly traditional work, the Aria from the famous "Variations Goldberg" by JS Bach, followed by Variation I, a change magically interpreted by the formidable duo.

Other songs are also inspired by the seasons - in reference to their states of mind - as the autumn "Last Fallen Leaf" (track 13) or "Winter" (track 14), thus setting up the CD program as a "journey of the soul."

Leuchter and Melrose are musicians, whose varied professional experience and scientific research - interpretive and compositional - are truly "multicultural" and not co-incidentally does the text "World Accordion meets fingerstyle Guitar" appear prominently on the back cover of the CD.


Reviewed by Alessandro Mugnoz... 06 February 2012.