Anja Lechner performs as soloist with leading orchestras, as a chamber musician, and as creative participant in diverse projects between the genres. Composers who have written music for her range from Tigran Mansurian, Valentin Silvestrov, Tõnu Kõrvits, Hooshyar Khayam, Zad Moultaka to Dino Saluzzi.

The large scope of her musical interests is reflected in more than twenty albums for ECM Records. Her recent releases include Quasi Parlando, music of Tigran Mansurian, with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Mirrors, music of Tõnu Kõrvits, whose compositions she has premiered with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under Tõnu Kaljuste, and Lontano, featuring Lechner’s duo with French pianist Francois Couturier, playing music of Giya Kancheli, Anouar Brahem, Ariel Ramirez beside their own music. Lechner and Couturier also collaborate in the Tarkovsky Quartet, with their third ECM album Nuit Blanche.

“One of the most gifted cellists in the world, often bridging the gap between contemporary and traditional, east and west, and arranged and improvisational music”

– Greg Cahill, Strings, USA 

Lechner was a founding member of the Rosamunde String Quartett, with whom she worked for 18 years until the group’s dissolution in 2009, playing on major international stages and at chamber music festivals. Since 1998, she collaborates with Argentine bandoneon master Dino Saluzzi.

This season 2022/23, Anja Lechner is presenting old and new music for solo cello from J. S. Bach to Valentin Silvestrov, as well as a premiere of her own music with improvisations involved. She is touring with guitarist Pablo Márquez, playing music by Franz Schubert from their latest ECM album Die Nacht and preparing a new program with compositions commissioned by the duo to the composers Cheol-Ha Park, Golfam Khayam, Zad Moultaka, Oscar Strasnoy and others. Furthermore, the duo Lechner/Couturier is presenting their new program Lontano.

In May she will be invited to premiere a new project together with Jakob Bro, Marilyn Mazur and Palle Mikkelborg in the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin.

Anja Lechner grew up in Neubeuern am Inn and studied with Heinrich Schiff and János Starker. She resides in Munich, where she teaches.