Keith Jarrett’s 80th birthday celebrated with release of New Vienna – At the Musikverein, 2016

New Vienna is the fourth concert recording to be released from Keith Jarrett’s final European solo tour. It follows Munich 2016, Budapest Concert and Bordeaux Concert. Why New Vienna? As Jarrett aficionados will know, his discography already includes a legendary Vienna Concert (recorded at the Vienna State Opera) whose music, he once claimed, spoke “the language of the flame itself”, after long years of “courting the fire”. Keith Jarrett’s 2016 return to the Austrian capital brought the flames of inspiration to another historic location with lively acoustic properties, the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, where, at the start of the previous century, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern had premiered works that challenged and changed the course of modern music.

New Vienna, shaping its new music in the moment, is near-encyclopaedic in scope. The long forms that typified Jarrett’s early solo concert journeys – from Bremen/Lausanne and Köln to the first Vienna Concert and beyond – had given way, in this concluding phase of his performing life, to shows comprised of shorter, self-contained and contrasting pieces which, in their totality, frequently attained an impromptu suite-like character. And so it was at the Musikverein on July 9, 2016. Part I – the first of nine parts – is a spontaneous whirlwind of sound, swirling, dense and complex – Impetuous as force of nature. Part II floats chords in silence, and slowly draws out a plangent melody. Rhythm is to the fore in Part III, an outstanding instance of Jarrett’s capacity to develop separate and interweaving patterns with each hand.

Part IV is hymnic, trailing clouds of glory, Part V pure balladry channelled from the ether. Part VI refracts the lyrical impulse, rendering it more abstract, and Part VII is a tender song one might imagine rescored for the Belonging quartet. Part VIII gets down to basics with the blues, and Part IX, with its hints of both gospel and country, reminds us of how all-embracing Jarrett’s musical visions could be. With “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”, phrased differently from the splendid versions heard on La Scala, a Multitude of Angels and Munich 2016, Jarrrett concludes another exceptional performance.

New Vienna is issued as Keith Jarrett turns 80. Although he has not played live since 2017, public interest in his solo music remains high, with this year’s 50^th anniversary of The Köln Concert also generating worldwide media attention.

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