Arseni Tarkovsky

François Couturier leads his Tarkovsky Quartet on their third album dedicated to the great film director Andrej Tarkovsky. The two previous volumes, released in 2006 and 2011, were greeted with unanimous international praise; the musical and human experience during the recordings and subsequent tours and concerts revealing the huge potential of the highly original formation consisting of piano, cello, saxophone and accordion.

French pianist Francois Couturier was inspired by Soviet film director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) in creating the music on this album, but it should be noted at the outset that the album does not contain any music actually used in Tarkovsky's films in general or his 1983 movie Nostalghia in particular. Rather, Couturier, who states his admiration for Tarkovsky in his brief liner notes, saying that has "seen all his films over and over again," tried to evoke the mood of those films in writing these pieces of music, several of which share titles with them.