Keith Jarrett: A Tribute

by Karl Nehring

Earlier this month, American pianist and composer Keith Jarrett celebrated his 80^th birthday. Although best known as a jazz pianist, his body of work extends far beyond jazz – and beyond the piano. We have reviewed a few of his recordings in the past; you can find those reviews here (Budapest Concert), here, (Bourdeaux Concert), and here (C.P.E. Bach Sonatas). Like many people, my first encounter with his playing was from listening to Forest Flower, on which Jarrett played piano as a member of the Charles Lloyd Quartet in a live set at the 1966 Monterey Jazz Festival that was released on Atlantic Records in 1967. In 1971, Jarrett, who was then touring with Miles Davis, had a fateful meeting with producer Manfred Eicher that resulted in Jarrett recording a solo piano album, Facing You, which was released in 1972 on Eicher’s ECM label. In 1973, had released Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne, the first of what would become a series of concert recordings during which Jarrett played improvised music. Popular music critic Rick Beato has posted a YouTube video (which you can see here) describing a segment of this recording as “two of the most beautiful minutes in music.” 

While in the Army in 1974, I picked up both of his “American” quartet albums – Fort Yawuh and Treasure Island – on the Impulse! label, the latter of which featured Jarrett picking up the soprano saxophone on one of the cuts. As a side note, his “American” quartet included the late Dewey Redman, father of Joshua Redman (whose recent performance we mentioned here), on tenor saxophone, along with Charlie Haden on bass and Paul Motian on drums). 1974 also saw the release of the album Belonging on the ECM label, this by Jarrett’s “European” quartet, with Jan Garbarek on tenor saxophone, Palle Danielsson on bass, and Jon Christensen on drums. It’s a beautiful recording, highlighting Jarrett’s skill as a composer as well as a pianist. Then in 1975, ECM released what would become the best-selling piano recording in history, Jarrett’s The Köln Concert. It’s a spellbinding album that still sounds fresh and new 50 years after its initial release.

In 1976, Jarrett received a commission from the Deutsche Grammophon to compose a piece for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It was to be conducted by Seiji Ozawa and feature Jarrett on piano. Jarrett completed his 200-page, 40-minute score for The Celestial Hawk in 1978. The BSO had been expecting a jazzy piece with Jarrett doing a lot of improvising, apparently thinking that would guarantee box-office success; when they saw it was a serious classical composition, they lost interest, and the project was dropped. Instead, Eicher decided to record the work for his ECM label, with Jarrett on piano accompanied by the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christopher Keene. It was released in 1980.

 

In 1984, Eicher decided to expand ECM into the classical realm and brought a new sound into the musical world with the release of Arvo Pärt’s Tabula rasa, the first album on the label’s New Series imprint. This recording also marked the intersection of some of the most longstanding, significant musical collaborators in the label’s history: Arvo Pärt, Gidon Kremer, and Keith Jarrett. I was quite familiar with Jarrett, somewhat familiar with Kremer, but my familiarity with Pärt extended only as far as having heard his name but not his music when, late at night in 1984 while sitting in my car having just finished a shift as a security guard while I was still in grad school, over the radio came music that immediately held me under its spell. The late-night host on WOSU-FM announced that he was playing some tracks from a new album of music by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, and that we had just heard his composition Fratres, performed by violinist Gidon Kremer and pianist Keith Jarrett. Keith Jarrett?! Although the music sold itself, Jarrett’s endorsement made me even more eager to run out and purchase the CD just as soon as I could find it; I have been an enthusiastic Arvo Pärt fan ever since.

Jarrett went on to release many, many recordings over the ensuing decades, both as a soloist and as part of an ensemble. Many of these were jazz, of course, but there were also many classical efforts, in music of Bach Handel, Mozart, Shostakovich, Bartók, Barber, Harrison, and Hovhaness. (If I may be permitted another personal aside, it was Jarrett who introduced me to the 24 Preludes and Fugues for Piano by Shostakovich – I had many recordings of DSCH’s symphonies and was somewhat familiar with his concertos and chamber music but had no idea this marvelous piano music even existed until ECM released Jarrett’s recording in 1992. I now own several versions and continue to delight in this music that Jarrett first revealed to me.) 

 

In 1994, Jarrett’s Bridge of Light album appeared on the ECM New Series label, containing four classical compositions by Jarrett: Elegy for Violin and String Orchestra, Adagio for Oboe and String Orchestra, Sonata for Violin and Piano, and Bridge of Light for Viola and Orchestra. Jarrett said of these works, “Actually, all of these pieces are born of a desire to praise and contemplate rather than a desire to "make" or "show" or "demonstrate" something unique. They are, in a certain way, prayers that beauty may remain perceptible despite fashions, intellect, analysis, progress, technology, distractions, "burning issues" of the day, the un-hipness of belief or faith, concert programming, and the unnatural "scene" of "art", the market, lifestyles, etc., etc., etc. I am not attempting to be "clever" in these pieces (or in these notes), I am not attempting to be a composer. I am trying to reveal a state I think is missing in today's world (except, perhaps, in private): a certain state of surrender: surrender to an ongoing harmony in the universe that exists with or without us. Let us let it in.” It is a charming album, pastoral and serene. If you were to listen to it today without being told who the composer is, your guess might well be a British composer such as, say. Butterworth. 

Tragically enough, in 2018 Jarrett suffered the first of several strokes that robbed him of the use of his left hand, thus leaving him unable to continue his career at the piano. However, ECM has since released several albums of past concert performances; in fact, there is a release of a recording he made in Vienna that we will be reviewing in a forthcoming post. For more insight into this fascinating musician, whose music blurred the boundaries between classical and jazz, between composed and improvised, there is a an in-depth interview that the notoriously press-shy Jarrett granted to Rick Beato; that fascinating video can be seen here.

Piano Potpourri No. 10 (CD Reviews)

 by Karl Nehring

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Württemberg Sonatas. (CD1) Sonata 1 in a-minor; Sonata II in A-flat major; Sonata III in e-minor; (CD2) Sonata IV in B-flat major; Sonata V in E-flat major; Sonata VI in b minor. Keith Jarrett, piano. ECM New Series 2790/91 485 8495

 

The American pianist Keith Jarrett (b. 1945) is known primarily for his work in jazz, both as a solo artist (his Köln Concert album is the largest-selling solo jazz recording ever) and for his work in various ensembles, having led two famous quartets (one American, one European), a trio, as well as having played keyboard on noteworthy jazz recordings such as Charles Lloyd, Miles Davis, and Kenny Wheeler. However, he has also ventured into classical music, recording works by Bach, Barber, Bartok, Händel, Mozart, Pärt, and Shostakovich for the ECM New Series label. He has even tried his hand at composing some serious classical works. Tragically enough, in 2018 Jarrett suffered the first of several strokes that robbed him of the use of his left hand, thus leaving him unable to play the piano. Earlier this year, Jarrett agreed to be interviewed by Rick Beato; that fascinating video can be seen here.

We have previously reviewed a couple of his solo piano recordings (those reviews can be found here and here. Although those releases captured the pianist performing improvised music in live concert settings, this latest release is of composed music; in this instance, music composed by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), the fifth child and second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed these six Württemberg Sonatas between 1742 and 1744 in Berlin or at Teplitz, a resort town which Karl Eugen, the Duke of Württemberg, had visited. It was to the Duke that the Sonatas were dedicated. The music is something of an in-between music – not as structure as that of the elder Bach, but not quite as loose and melodic as what was yet to come. This was music originally intended to be performed on the harpsichord; Jarrett’s choice to record it on the piano was a novel one back in 1994. The end result is pleasant, but in the end, never quite seems to catch fire. The music is lovely enough, especially in some of some of its slower passages (e.g., the second movement Adagio of Sonata II), but some of the allegro movements come across as slightly undercaffeinated. The recording quality is excellent, as we have come to expect from ECM. 

 

The Future is Female: Vol. 3 At Play. Hélène de Montgeroult: Sonata No.9 in F sharp minor; Cécile Chaminade: Thème varié, Op. 98; Grazyna Bacewicz: Scherzo; Chen Yi: Guessing; Franghiz Ali-Zadeh: Music for Piano; Pauline Oliveros: Quintuplets Play Pen: Homage to Ruth Crawford; Hannah Kendall: On the Chequer'd Field Array'd; Aida Shirazi: Albumblatt; Regina Harris Baiocchi: Piano Poems. Sarah Cahill, piano. First Hand Records FHR133

 

Volume 3 of The Future Is Female marks the completion of this recording project undertaken by the American pianist Sarah Cahill (b. 1960). As we noted in our review of Volume 2, which can be seen here, this is not just another piano recital recording, for Sarah Cahill is not just another pianist. Among other things, she is also a musical explorer, communicator, and advocate. Her radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8 pm in San Francisco. The program focuses on the relationships between classical music and new music, encompassing interviews with musicians and composers, historical performances, and recordings outside the mainstream. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 2018, she started working on her project, The Future is Female, which now encompasses more than 70 compositions; these recordings are a reflection of that project.

We reviewed Volume 2 upon its release in a review that can be found here. Now this new release continues in much the same vein, highlighting relatively unknown works by female composers both past (Hélène de Montgeroult, whose Sonata No.9 opens the program, lived from 1764 to 1836) and present (the youngest composer represented, Aida Shirazi, was born in 1987). The music is largely accessible, certainly never less than listenable. Cahill has chosen wisely, presenting music that will make listeners want to hear more. The liner notes offer portraits of all the composers plus brief notes on their compositions. Kudos to Ms. Cahill and the folks at First Hand Records for bringing us some appealing music that we might very well otherwise never have had the opportunity to enjoy.

Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 (CD review)

Also, C.P.E. Bach: Symphonies Wq 175 & 183/4. Bernhard Forck, Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin. Harmonia Mundi HMM 902420.

By John J. Puccio

If any of Beethoven’s major works benefit from being played by a period-instrument band following historically informed performance practices, it’s surely his first two symphonies. He wrote them, after all, with one foot still firmly planted in the Classical Period and the other foot starting to move in the direction of Romanticism.

The Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin, under the guidance of concertmaster Bernhard Forck, give us performances that undoubtedly come close to what Beethoven might have wanted in his day, yet they are not rigid in their adherence to the composer’s famously controversial tempo markings. If we may take Roger Norrington’s recordings with the London Classical Players as a benchmark for following Beethoven almost to the letter, Forck’s interpretations are more relaxed, a minute or more slower than Norrington in all the fast movements. By comparison, Norrington may be more exacting but he also sounds more wooden, more concerned with playing the notes in proper speeds rather than letting the music flow more naturally as Forck does. In essence, Forck plays both of these first two Beethoven symphonies somewhere between the composer’s absolute tempos and what we hear from most traditional readings on modern instruments. It’s not a bad trade-off and works better here, I think, than in Forck’s recording of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, which I reviewed some months earlier, where the near-metronome tempos took away some of music’s charm.

Anyway, Beethoven wrote his Symphony No. 1 in C major in the late 1790’s, premiered it in 1800, and published it in 1801. It clearly shows the influence of two of the composer’s forerunners, Mozart and Haydn, yet it also shows traces of what was to come in his Third Symphony. That is, we see dissonance and contrast used more predominately than ever before. Maestro Forck doesn’t overemphasize these characteristics, but he does play with them enough to make the audience aware of their significance. While Forck may observe HIP standards, at the same time he recognizes that this music looks forward to the Romantic Age and, as occasion arises, he softens it a touch, “romanticizes” it, as it were. The result is a delight, some of the best early Beethoven you’ll find.

Bernhard Forck

Beethoven wrote the Symphony No. 2 in D major in 1801 or 1802 and premiered it in 1803 at a time when his deafness was getting worse, and almost incurable. Not everyone seemed to like the symphony in its day, one critic writing that it was like “a hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to die, but writhing in its last agonies and, in the fourth movement, bleeding to death.” Harsh. Yet it wasn’t just in Beethoven’s time that the symphony got panned. Even more recently musicologist Robert Greenberg has written, “Beethoven's gastric problems, particularly in times of great stress--like the fall of 1802--were legendary. It has been understood almost since the day of its premiere that that is what this music is all about. Beethoven never refuted it; in fact, he must have encouraged it. Otherwise, how could such an interpretation become common coin? And common coin it is.”

“Gastric problems” or not, the music has survived the barbs nicely through the centuries, and Maestro Forck plays it with a lively, though never extreme, enthusiasm. It’s remarkable, too, that the orchestra, playing on period instruments, sound so effortlessly modern. There is none of the abrasive quality we sometimes hear in period orchestras. And the reduced size of the ensemble affords excellent transparency and immediacy. These performances are among those period-instrument/historically informed affairs that will appeal to folks who usually resist such things. The recording makes another fine addition to the catalogue.

Coupled with the Beethoven are two sinfonias (early symphonies) by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), written several decades before the Beethoven works and chosen, I would imagine, to point up the differences and similarities those few decades made in the development of orchestral music. Franck and his team play them with the same restrained ardor they display in the Beethoven, making them a light and airy listen. However, I didn’t much care for their positions on the disc, opening the program and then separating the two Beethoven symphonies. I would have preferred having them set apart on their own. Still, with a CD player one can play them in any order one chooses or disregard them altogether.

Artistic Director Rene Moller and sound engineer Tobias Lehmann recorded the symphonies at Teldex Studio Berlin in September 2018. The sound has a nice sense of presence, of left-right, back-front stereo spread. It’s also realistic in its frequency response and dynamics, but it never hits you over the head with anything unusual: no brightness, no edge, no dullness, no noise, no closeness.

Although there is nothing spectacular about the sound, everything seems just right for a smooth, pleasurable experience.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:

C.P.E. Bach: Berlin Symphonies (CD review)

Hartmut Haenchen, Kammerorchester C.P.E. Bach. Brilliant Classics 94777.

It seems that every few years we go through a C.P.E. Bach renaissance. C.P.E comes and goes in the public's consciousness, and these days he appears to be in again. With that in mind, I thought it of interest to review this 2014 Brilliant Classics reissue of a spirited 1985 Capriccio album of C.P.E. Bach's Berlin Symphonies from Maestro Hartmut Haenchen and the C.P.E. Chamber Orchestra.

Carl Philip Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) was the eldest of Johann Sebastian's several musically inclined children (actually the fifth child and the second son), and, more important, he's the one who gets most of the attention today. C.P.E. falls into the transition period between the Baroque and Classical eras, and thus we find elements of both styles in his music. His own approach to music combined the best of both worlds, although he leaned toward what critics of the time called the "sensitive style"; that is, one that expressed "true and natural" feelings with sudden contrasts in mood as opposed to the more-popular "rococo style" that emphasized simplicity and immediacy of appeal.

In any case, the present disc contains five of the nine symphonies C.P.E wrote while living in Berlin (1738-1768). A booklet note tells us that audiences of the day tended to judge the worth of a composition on its degree of novelty, and "the widespread acclaim that C.P.E. Bach won all over Europe was due in large measure to his originality and wealth of invention." In the words of musicologist Jan LaRue, "Once a Bach symphony has got under way in the usual fashion, some intriguing detail may 'crop up' any moment: a forbidden dissonance, a mighty thunderclap, a headlong rush downwards, an abrupt change of tempo or a surprising modulation." And so it goes with the five symphonies on Maestro Haenchen's disc.

The works included are the Symphony in E flat, Wq179 (H654); Symphony in F, Wq181 (H656); Symphony in C, Wq174 (H649); Symphony in F, Wq175 (H650); and Symphony in E minor, Wq178 (H653). Haenchen and his chamber orchestra play the works on modern instruments, but they provide sparkling performances--buoyant, breezy, and well judged.

I suppose I would have liked hearing these works played on period instruments; I've gotten used to such things over time. Still, given the modern instruments employed, it's quite pleasurable, and, of course, listeners who don't like period instruments will find it exactly right. The sound of the ensemble is smooth, elegant, and refined, whereas period instruments would have given the sound a slightly rougher, more-rustic quality.

That said, Maestro Haenchen's performances of these little three-movement symphonies are lively and invigorating, providing much charm in the process. They bustle with good cheer, vitality, and brilliant playing. There is nothing lax about the slow movements, either; indeed, if anything, Haenchen takes them a tad too quickly for my taste. But he is imaginative, keeping Bach's invention foremost in mind, and sometimes that requires a fairly vigorous and flexible tempo.

In the Symphony in F (H656), for instance, the last of the Berlin symphonies Bach wrote, Haenchen pounces on every contrast and every turbulent characteristic he can find, emphasizing them with zest. In the Andante, he maintains a strong forward momentum, and in the concluding Allegro assai he provides a welcome sense of fun.

And so it goes. I can't say I really loved any of these symphonies, despite Bach's attempts at doing daring things for his day and the critical acclaim he received. The music continues to sound rather too much the same to me, a bit too formulaic. (H650 sounds the most modern, "modern" for the times in any case.) Nevertheless, I can't imagine this music being any better played than it is here, unless maybe, as I've said, the orchestra had played it on period instruments.

The C.P.E. Bach Chamber Orchestra made the recording for the Capriccio label at Christuskirche Berlin in March 1985, with producer Heinz Wegner and recording engineer Hartmut Kolbach taking care of the technical details. Brilliant Classics reissued the disc in 2014. The orchestral sound seems a tad bright, but there's no questioning its clarity, openness, and air. I liked how well the detail and definition come through, and I enjoyed hearing the ensemble's scope and depth and dimensionality, even if it comes at the expense of some small degree of natural warmth.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

C.P.E. Bach: Cello Concertos (CD review)

Truls Mork, cello; Bernard Labadie, Les Violons du Roy. Virgin Classics 50999 6944920 8.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), one of the many sons of Johann Sebastian Bach, was, along with his younger brother, Johann Christian, probably the most famous of the siblings and almost as prolific as his father. C.P.E. (named, incidentally, for Georg Philipp Telemann, his godfather) became one of the leaders of the Classical movement in eighteenth-century music, bridging the Baroque and Classical periods. His three cello concertos, which we get on this disc, were not necessarily among his most-popular works, but they do demonstrate his originality and invention.

C.P.E. composed the cello concertos between 1750 and 1753, and to this day there is some small dispute as to whether he originally wrote them for cello, flute, or keyboard. We'll set that debate aside for the moment and assume he wrote them for cello, possibly for one of the many Saturday-afternoon public concerts to which he often contributed pieces. Now, here's the thing: In the 1700's, hardly anybody wrote cello concertos. So the very fact that C.P.E. did so puts him a step ahead of his colleagues in terms of innovation. Even today there aren't very many recordings of them (usually, we get only the Cello Concerto in A major, Wq.172, the most popular of the three).

Frankly, this was the first time I can ever remember hearing C.P.E.'s cello concertos, so I haven't really got any other recording with which to make comparisons. Still, I can't imagine other performances surpassing this one by Norwegian cellist Truls Mork and the French-Canadian chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy, under the directorship of its founder, Bernard Labadie. Les Violons du Roy use modern instruments but follow period practices, so we get realizations that are most likely as close as possible to what the composer intended.

The album begins with the A major Concerto, the most well rounded of the three. It has a lively opening movement, perhaps the most sprightly and enterprising of all the music on the disc. Apparently, C.P.E. wanted to catch one's attention with it, in the manner of an overture. Pulsing rhythms and a wealth of dynamic contrasts grab and sustain the listener's interest throughout, with Mork's virtuosic playing well supported by the fourteen or so members of the accompanying ensemble. Then comes the slow, center movement, which is the polar opposite of the more exuberant preceding one. This Largo is actually fairly melancholy, almost funereal in tone. While one might call it introspective or contemplative, there is a note of gloom about it as well, with Monk making his instrument practically weep. And then in the closing Allegro it's back to the carefree attitude of the beginning section, although without quite the forward thrust.

The B flat major Concerto, Wq.171, is more elegant and stately than the robust 172.  It seems more Baroque in style, filled with fewer surprises. Yet it is still charming, its slow movement reflective and longing, its concluding movement peppy and energetic, almost Vivaldi-like. The program concludes with the A minor Concerto, Wq.170, the earliest of the concertos and also the most conventional. Nevertheless, Mork's interpretation--spirited, cultivated, and plaintive by turns--make the music quite moving, especially the pensive slow movement. Distinguished playing characterizes all three performances; they are well worth one's time.

The sound, recorded by Virgin in 2008 in Palais Montcalm, Quebec, in November, 2008, is somewhat forward, but pleasantly so, with the cello well integrated with the surrounding instruments. Like the performances, the sonics are lively, dynamic, and colorful, with a slightly reverberant effect adding to the realism. Although midrange clarity is perhaps not as transparent nor the ensemble's depth of field as extensive as one would like, the spaciousness of the acoustic and the spontaneity of the playing more than make up for it. The result is a vivid yet natural sound that properly complements the music.

JJP