Keith Jarrett – The Köln Concert

The success of the album must have surprised and delighted both Jarrett and Manfred Eicher and has continued to capture the imagination and ears of audiences far beyond the narrow confines of genre into that realm that is simply timeless music.

ECM 1064/65 2LP / 780 3132

Keith Jarrett (piano)
Recorded January 24, 1975, Opera, Köln

Fifty years after it was released The Köln Concert is acknowledged as the biggest selling solo piano album of any genre, and yet reading the story of how the concert and recording came to be suggests that perhaps it should never have been recorded never mind released.

Arguably there are better live recordings by Jarrett that have been released by ECM, although where wholly improvised music is concerned that is always a subject open to debate, yet the music captured a moment in time where a musician is faced with less than favourable circumstances but still must perform and is expected to do so at the highest level.

Fatigued after a long car journey and suffering chronic back pain, Jarrett was presented with a substandard piano with the wrong instrument having been placed on the stage after a concert earlier that evening had concluded. What followed was an epic and heroic battle by the pianist to overcome the instruments shortcomings and focus and channel his own musical imagination to produce two long improvisations that are packed with drama, moments of lyrical beauty and at time fierce rhythmic drive.

The opening improvisation ‘Köln, January 24, 1975, Part I’ opens tentatively with the pianist finding his way around the piano. This is done in an intensely lyrical way as Jarrett treads carefully. As the improvisation progresses Jarrett’s keen sense of rhythm kick in, and this is where the piano appears to fight back with clusters of notes and chords striving to be heard cleanly and with definition. Unphased, Jarrett persists and ultimately wins out and concludes the improvisation in the way it began with a delightfully lyrical passage.

Having got to grips with this most temperamental if pianos, in ‘Köln, January 24, 1975, Part II a / II b’ Jarrett once again combines fiercely combative ostinatos with melodic and increasingly complex right-hand improvisations that are simply astonishing in their detail and this drama is resolved by releasing the flurry of notes in to gently lyrical passages that appear as out of nowhere at just the right moment.

This iconic album closes, as Jarret would do in the years that followed, with a more or less composed encore. This would often be a favoured standard but here Jarrett focusses on his own compositions in a singularly melodic and deeply felt piece that was simply titled ‘Köln, January 24, 1975, Part II c’.

The success of the album must have surprised and delighted both Jarrett and Manfred Eicher and has continued to capture the imagination and ears of audiences far beyond the narrow confines of genre into that realm that is simply timeless music. Beautifully packaged by ECM as 2LP set with new photographs and liner notes this is a fitting acknowledgement of 50^th anniversary of this marvellous concert.