It’s tempting to suggest that this Lausanne and Bremen solo concert set was a stepping stone towards his landmark The Köln Concert, recorded on 24 January 1975.

However, comparing the similarities and differences in one of Jarrett’s totally improvised, spontaneously created concerts with another is rather like taking the Rorschach Test, which is predicated on the subjective nature of interpreting imagery.

It’s a test that many experts now consider inexact, equally so if we were to substitute aural for visual imagery. So in general, rather than specific terms there is no doubt that Jarrett’s approach to the solo concert has been one of constant evolution. The Bremen and Lausanne concerts, recorded 50 years ago, still retain a remarkable freshness, and demonstrate a willingness to tease-out ideas, and develop them over a broad time span, in contrast to his post The Carnegie Hall Concert from 2006, where ideas were condensed and punched out in soundbites of less than 10 minutes and formed the basis of his modus operandi in the years that followed.

The former approach does have the virtue of allowing the listener to engage more deeply with the improvisational process, and perhaps appreciate the enormity of Jarrett’s task, which is being commissioned to compose, on the spot, a 70-minute concert of music that neither he or the audience have ever heard and which he and the audience have no idea in advance what it will be about.

Opening with the Bremen concert, Jarrett is in somewhat formal mood suggestive of a classical recital, which gradually evolves through the addition of blues hues and sustained ostinatos to a destination we never quite glimpse. The development of ideas is done horizontally, logically and organically, and is free from the kind of gentle mood swings that would add spice to later works.

The recorded sound is warm and full, and captures a full, rounded piano sound – a notoriously difficult task for sound engineers, even today.