Anssi Karttunen - Mystery Variations on Giuseppe Colombi's Chiacona (2013)

To celebrate the 50th birthday of the Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen in 2010 his wife, Muriel von Braun, and colleague and countrywoman Kaija Saariaho wrote to a number of composers with whose music Karttunen had been working, asking each to write a variation on the Chiacona per basso solo by the Italian composer Giuseppe Colombi (1635-94) — perhaps the earliest work in the history of the cello. The composers were not told who else was involved in the project, and Karttunen agreed to perform the music before he had seen it — hence the title, Mystery Variations. These 31 variations thus link the very beginning of the cello repertoire with music by some of the most distinguished composers of the present day and, with their distant echo of Beethoven's 32 'Diabelli' Variations, provide a showcase for the extraordinary resourcefulness of contemporary cello technique.