“It is NOT natural to sit down at the piano without pre-selected pieces, completely clear your mind of musical ideas, and then play something that is brand new and at the same time of lasting value,” Keith Jarrett sighs. liner notes to his solo 3cd album Paris / London-Testament. Yet it was precisely this difficult task that, after a difficult period of chronic fatigue and a broken relationship
… - “the third time in four years” - he again imposed. And again he managed to give two very different but both very impressive solo concerts in Paris and London on November 26 and December 1, 2008. Almost 35 years after his famous Köln Concert, this piano virtuoso still shows that he still has the power and imagination to be able to create special music from scratch. Sometimes this leads to a logical sounding spontaneously improvised suite (Paris), at other times the pre-nervousness runs so high that the concert progresses from a “dark searching multi-tonal melodic triumph” to a “heart beating and never to be repeated pulsating rock band-like concert ”(London). (HB)more
