Otto Lechner started his musical career as an autodidact. He was background musician of the cabaret artist Josef Hader. After this cooperation he mainly worked in composition and music for theatre productions ( Burgtheater Wien, Schillertheater Berlin et al.). Lately he won with the presentation of his accordion - soloprogram The Dark Side of the Accordeon" in Melbourne, Australia the National Radio Award of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The music of Otto Lechner is affected by rural moods, whose existence seems dissappered for long time. It is a journey to places which you never have seen, accompanied by the sense, knowing them a long time. My preferences always aplly to the styles in which improvisation is in the foreground - and so it should not amaze, that some coevals have called me a jazzpianist. In the middle of the eighties I discovered the instrument of my childhood again the accordion. During my attempt to make the oppressed and clichéd accordion to the instrument of my music, some dissonances are unfortunately inescapable ."
