Keith Jarrett DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH 24 Preludes and Fugues Opus 87

To many readers of Gramophone, Keith Jarrett will no doubt be pre-eminently a ''jazz pianist''. That label, combined with knowledge of his outspokenness and engaging lack of false modesty (see for instance the Gramophone interview, 9/91), might lead one to expect his Shostakovich to be wayward or controversial. In fact there's very little that's startling about this recording, apart perhaps from the meticulous clarity of the playing (the beautifully focused ECM recording helps of course). I can't remember another performance of the tumultuous D flat major Fugue in which the details have stood out so finely or the voices maintained their identity with such compelling consistency.
There are a few surprises though; not least the overall timing. Jarrett's cycle takes about half an hour less than the dedicatee Tatyana Nikolaieva's Gramophone Award-winning set on Hyperion. Roger Woodward's long deleted RCA set (12/75) took about the same time, but that sounded hurried; this doesn't. It's another good example of the huge difference that can exist between psychological and clock time. In fact in one case—the C major Fugue—Jarrett's basic pulse is almost exactly half that of Nikolaieva; and there's a good reason—he's the only professional pianist I've ever heard who takes the metronome marking given in the complete Shostakovich Edition (crotchet=92) at face value. Full marks for research; for me though the music crawls at this speed, and with long notes held for double their length it's harder to follow the part-writing. Jarrett's only other significant departure from current normal practice is his substitution of a grinding right-hand f—d flat'—f' for Shostakovich's d—b flat—d' in bar 23 (track 3: 0'42'') of the G major Prelude: surely a misreading.
As those timings suggest, Jarrett on the whole is inclined to take things faster than Nikolaieva. In one or two places I prefer his tempos: Nikolaieva's slow three-in-a-bar in the superb G sharp minor passacaglia-prelude sounds effortful (in the first big crescendo at least) after Jarrett; but comparing them in the later stages of this grandly symphonic piece it's Nikolaieva who seems to me to have got nearer to the dark heart of this music. That's certainly the case in the following Fugue, where Jarrett has the poise, the brilliance and the strong sense of shape one would expect, but in the Nikolaieva there's another, more obviously human dimension: pained intensity, fear, final resignation—inadequate terms, but perhaps giving some idea of what she, uniquely, provides. The Rosslyn Hill Chapel acoustic may be cloudier, the playing may not be utterly blemish-free, but the vision and expressive penetration are beyond comparison.
I don't want to give the impression that Nikolaieva wins unequivocally in every single prelude or fugue. Jarrett's liquid cantabile in the Chopinesque F sharp major Prelude persuades me more readily than the relatively pedestrian Nikolaieva, and his handling of the subsequent Fugue was a real revelation to me—serenity, in Shostakovich! I also enjoyed his darting G major Fugue very much, and still more the rippling, glittering elegance of his B flat major Prelude. Take any one of his performances at random there'll almost certainly be something to catch and challenge the ear. What I do miss though is not just Nikolaieva's wider and deeper expressive range, but the remarkable cumulative effect she brings to the cycle as a whole—the impression of a great musical journey with the final D minor Fugue as its crowning moment. The more one follows Jarrett through the score, the less involving his playing seems to become. An interesting set, certainly, but not, for me, a deeply rewarding one.'  (Stephen Johnson / Gramophone)

Keith Jarrett / Stuttgarter Kammerorchester / Dennis Russell Davies MOZART Piano Concertos K.271, 453, 466 - Adagio and Fugue K.546

Pianist Keith Jarrett and conductor Dennis Russell Davies - musical collaborators for 20 yerars - have both singled out this second round of Mozart Piano Concertos as an exceptional experience in their recording history. Jarrett: 'I feel it's some of the best work I've done. There were things happening that were magic. The orchestra was taken by surprise, Dennis was taken by surprise, I was taken by surprise.' The emphasis is on communicative interplay between the soloist and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra under the inspired direction of Davies.

Keith Jarrett J.S. BACH Das Wohltemperierte Klavier Buch I

Keith Jarrett is not the first pianist to establish himself as a jazz musician and fluent improviser before seeking public recognition as a scaler of 'classical' peaks, as my old 78s of the Andre Previn Trio testify, but to attempt the Eiger by the north face at such an early stage might be regarded as an act of veritable foolhardiness. Maybe so, but here you will find no dead or maimed body at the foot of the mountain. The annotation assumes that the reader does not need to be told the what and the why of the work, and focuses instead on Jarrest's approach to the music, beginning with his statement that ''This music does not need my assistance''. Well of course any music needs the performer's help to bring it to audible life but the leading question is: 'what kind of help is needed?'. Jarrett's answer is that the per former's duty is to understand the structure of this music, to grasp the expressive meaning of the lines without exaggeration and to allow the notes to speak for themselves without imposing extraneous notions. In my review of Schiff's recording (Decca) I commented that: ''If clarity is truly in the mind it will emerge through the fingers'', a view that Jarrett overtly shares and puts into practice; his lines emerge clearly, without the help of pianistic coloration, as does structure without the aid of bloated dynamics. He believes also that, in presenting music written for the harpsichord: ''the piano should not go beyond a certain limit of expression. And a piano version should not be played with the intention: 'Look here what the piano can do for this piece'. The piece is better than the piano.''
These are, then, performances in which tempos, phrasing, articulation and the execution of ornaments are convincing, and in which both instrument and performer serve as unobtrusive media through which the music emerges without 'enhancement'. They may seem too 'cool' for those accustomed to the variously 'personal' utterances of most pianists, even the respectful Schiff, but they accord with Bloch's (quoted) observation that: ''Bach's yearning was not outwardly burning fire, but a deep spirituality remaining within'', and as such I find them deeply rewarding. The piano sound is warmly 'neutral', neither hard nor supersoft, and it is finely recorded. May we have Book 2 please? (John Duarte, Gramophone 10/1988)

Keith Jarrett J.S. BACH Das Wohltemperierte Klavier Buch II

If, as I do, you enjoy Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues played on a variety of keyboard instruments, then Keith Jarrett's choice of a piano for Book 1 and a harpsichord for Book 2 may well appeal to you. I have been listening to his performances, especially of Book 1—which has been available for some time ((CD) 835 246-2, 10/88)—many times over and find much both to admire and enjoy. Jarrett seems to me to have successfully bridged the jazz world with the classical, proving himself in the process to be quite a formidable Bach player. There is nothing gimmicky or shallow in his playing; indeed, his fine rhythmic sense allied to a lively feeling for gesture, his grasp of ornament and his sheer spontaneity are aspects of the jazz musician's craft as much as the classical player's and they serve Bach's music extremely well.
If I have a criticism to make of Jarrett's Bach playing, it is that rhythmically he errs on the side of caution, seldom if ever allowing himself that degree of latitude—an effective and important aspect of style—favoured by more seasoned harpsichordists. On the other hand, there is no lack of vitality in his pulse and some readers I know will appreciate his keeping to the straight and narrow. The poetic C sharp major and the D minor Preludes (Book 2) provide good examples.
Listening to Book 2, one cannot but be impressed by Jarrett's fluency and seemingly effortless grasp of a technique which is, after all, quite different from that demanded by the piano. His is gentle, clearly articulated, unfussy and unpretentious playing which reaches the heart of the music without distraction or detour. This is demonstrated in the lovely E flat Prelude, where I distinctly hear Jarrett doing a Glenn Gould and humming along—a good sign rather than a bad one, I always feel.
I part company with him in a mild way over his execution of the grace-note in the three places where it occurs in this same Prelude; but he is in the best company, with players like Davitt Moroney (Harmonia Mundi) offering the same solution. My preference though, is for Kenneth Gilbert (Archiv Produktion) who, along with Wanda Landowska (RCA), Gustav Leonhardt (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi/BMG) and Colin Tilney (Hyperion), fit the passing note more comfortably into the prevailing motion. But, as I implied earlier on, these are performances which are likely to give enduring pleasure, above all, perhaps, for Jarrett's awareness of the music's poetic content. There is a serenity and a sensibility in his playing of the E major Prelude and Fugue, for example, which convey variously the grandeur, the delicate tracery and the poetry of Bach's music while also underlining its timelessness.
In short, an impressive and mainly satisfying release which stands up to comparison with the many fine performances currently available. My first choices remain Moroney (harpsichord), Tilney (clavichord, Book 1; harpsichord, Book 2), Gilbert (harpsichord) and Edwin Fischer (piano—EMI), but Jarrett's interpretation is not far behind in my affection and esteem. The instrument sounds well, but is described rather in the manner of a cheap and probably undrinkable EC wine as Italian/German style. A fine release. (Nicholas Anderson, Gramophone 9/1991)

Keith Jarret J.S. BACH The Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1

A previously unreleased live concert recording of Keith Jarrett performing Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 is out now. The live concert was recorded in March 1987 at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in New York state, a venue renowned for its beautiful acoustics. Keith Jarrett’s studio recording of JS Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier was made one month before the live concert recording, in February 1987, and was the first in a series of his acclaimed Bach recordings.

When the studio album was released, Jarrett’s manner in these iconic preludes and fugues surprised many listeners with its poetic restraint. Jarrett said, “When I play Bach, I do not hear the music, I hear almost the process of thought.” The pianist was deeply attuned to what he called “the process of thought” in Bach; by not imposing his personality unduly on the music, Jarrett allowed every note of the score to come through via the natural lyricism of the contrapuntal melodic lines, the dance-like pulse of the rhythmic flow. These qualities are strikingly apparent in Keith Jarrett’s live recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier, with its added electricity of a concert performance. Jarrett always points out that Bach was an improviser and, in some ways, Jarrett’s genius as an improviser brings him closer in spirit to the composer.

“These are performances in which tempos, phrasing, articulation and the execution of ornaments are convincing,” wrote Gramophone of Keith Jarrett’s first recorded account of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. “Both instrument and performer serve as unobtrusive media through which the music emerges without enhancement.”

Shani Diluka ROAD 66

Diluka brings appreciable nuance and delicacy to Adams’s China Gates and Beach’s Young Birches, and infuses the churning minimalist patterns of Glass’s Etude No 9 with more dynamic and colouristic range than one often hears from so-called contemporary music specialists. In most lyrical pieces, however, softer dynamics often recede and wilt to the point of fading away, especially when Diluka makes diminuendos. You hear this in the two Bernstein Anniversaries, Ginastera’s ‘Danza de la moza donosa’ and Grainger’s gorgeous transcription of Gershwin’s ‘Love walked in’. Her spineless performance of Copland’s Piano Blues No 1 lacks the sinew and projection heard from Leo Smit, the work’s dedicatee, although such a style befits Hyung-ki Joo’s noodly, shapeless Chandeliers. 

However, Diluka’s faster-than-usual tempo for Cage’s In a Landscape rescues this music from its usual frozen dream state. Her enervated, flaccid approach to Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans is alien to these jazz icons in both spirit and letter; in fact she misreads Waltz for Debby’s fourth-to-last chord. But Diluka plays the piano part to Raphaël Merlin’s brilliant, harmonically imaginative arrangement of Cole Porter’s ‘What is this thing called love’ gorgeously, abetted by special guest Natalie Dessay’s sultry singing. Had the two paired up for an entire CD’s worth of Merlin-arranged standards, I would have stayed up all night behind the wheel to listen, rather than squirming in the back seat to the tune of ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet?’ (Jed Distler / Gramophone)

ARVO PÄRT MUSICA SELECTA A Sequence by Manfred Eicher

Of all the longstanding relationships built between its artists and Manfred Eicher, the musical partnership of ECM Records' founder/primary producer and Estonian composer Arvo Pärt—who turned 80 years old on September 11, 2015—has to be one of the label's most important and fruitful. Certainly, amidst ECM's more composition-focused New Series imprint, there are few others whose collaborations with Eicher have proven to be so personally meaningful, so groundbreaking and so emotionally resonant. While Eicher worked in the classical world prior to launching the label's New Series imprint with Pärt's Tabula Rasa in 1984—specifically, beyond being double bassist in a symphony orchestra before starting the label in 1969, his work with early minimalist trendsetter Steve Reich, whose Music for 18 Musicians (1978), Octet; Music for Large Ensemble; Violin Phase (1980) and Tehillim (1982) would later be reissued on CD within the New Series sphere—it was Pärt's early, innovative work that both captured Eicher's ear and drove him to reach out to the composer, beginning a musical partnership that has yielded a baker's dozen of exceptional recordings under the composer's name over the past three decades, and a further two that bring Pärt compositions together with the likes of Philip Glass, Peter Maxwell Davies, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Werner Bärtschi and others whose music spans three centuries and only serves to demonstrate the sheer timelessness of Pärt's work. 

There are others who have released recordings of Pärt's music, but none have benefitted from the composer's collaboration with a producer who stands out as a rare entity, actively involved in the artists' process of making music. Eicher also stands out as a producer with the rare gift of being able to sequence music in a way that makes a recording more than a collection of separate pieces; instead, Eicher's sequencing ensures that ECM recordings—whether for the more improv-centric regular series or form-based New Series—possess an arc that makes them best experienced as a whole: stories, then, with a most distinct beginning, middle and end.
It's a skill that was particularly on display when Eicher personally selected and sequenced music for a series of listening stations at Munich's Haus der Kunst, which curated the ECM: A Cultural Archeology exhibition and series of concerts that ran from November, 2012 through to early February, 2013, and was documented in a lavish and informative book by the same name, along with the six-disc Selected Signs III-VIII (ECM, 2014), which collected Eicher's playlists into a revelatory box set of music that drew connections between seemingly disparate musics that few but someone intimately involved in their creation would hear...but which become perfectly clear upon listening.
Celebrating Pärt's 80th birthday and three decades of shared collaboration , Musica Selecta: A Sequence by Manfred Eicher is a well-stocked two-CD set the brings together eighteen pieces from twelve recordings released under Pärt's name, along with one previously unreleased composition, all selected and sequenced by Eicher to be, as the producer says in suitably sparse liner notes, "heard and experienced in a sequence. Each episode offers an insight into our shared journey. Together they evoke new associations, as the journey goes on. From long ago thus singing... begins the Clemens Brentano poem whose setting by Arvo introduces my sequence on this album. Like Brentano's nightingale, the music continues to sing."
And sing the entire 140-minute program does, whether literally on tracks like the referenced opener, "Es sang vor langen Jahren," which features soprano Susan Bickley, sparsely but sublimely supported by violinist Gidon Kremer and violist Vladimir Mendelssohn and first heard on Arbos (1987), or on wholly instrumental pieces like "Festina Lente," from 1991's Miserere—which, like all of the music on Musica Selecta, is founded on Pärt's tintinnabulism, a self-developed and continually honed compositional technique rooted in (and can thus be considered as) minimalism, but which shares little of the strong pulses that so often defined minimalist works by Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley.
Instead, tintinnabulism—initially inspired by chant music—is exquisitely meditative music largely predicated on slow tempi and typified by two voices: one, the tintinnabular voice, which arpeggiates the tonic triad; and the second, which moves diatonically in a stepwise motion. Pärt's early exploration of this technique reveals tintinnabulism perhaps most clearly on "Für Alina," first performed in Tallinn in 1976 but only released on Alina in 1999, where pianist Alexander Malter performs the piece twice, the two versions both bookended and separated by three versions of the similarly sparse "Spiegel im Spiegel," where the pianist is joined by clarinetist Vladimir Spivakov. Musica Selecta includes the first version of "Für Alina," a piece that almost defies possibility by starting out very quietly...and becoming even quieter as it develops, until there's barely anything left at all.
"Für Alina" perfectly exemplifies the description that Pärt's wife, Nora, has provided to explain the foundation of tintinnabulism, being "born from a deeply rooted desire for an extremely reduced sound world which could not be measured, as it were, in kilometres, or even metres, but only in millimetres....By the end the listening attention is utterly focused. At the point after the music has faded away it is particularly remarkable to hear your breath, your heartbeat, the lighting or the air conditioning system, for example." (John Kelman)

KEITH JARRETT Arbour Zena

 "I consider this one of my most richly lyrical and consistently inspired works," wrote Keith Jarrett of Arbour Zena. "Jan Garbarek's contribution is irreplaceable and ecstatic." It is easy to agree that Arbour Zena is one of Jarrett's most exceptional albums.

In some ways a follow-up to Jarrett's first recorded collaboration with Jan Garbarek, the previous year's Luminessence for saxophone and string orchestra, Arbour Zena adds Keith himself and bassist Charlie Haden to the mix. Evocative writing for strings, beautiful playing by Jan, Keith, and Haden at his most soulful, and a glowing panoramic production make this 1975 recording one of the finest of ECM's first decade albums.

Keith Jarrett / Dennis Russell Davies MOZART Piano Concertos K. 467, 488, 595 - Masonic Funeral Music K. 477 - Symphony in G minor K. 550

Keith Jarrett evidently has carte blanche to do anything he wants at Manfred Eicher's ECM label -- and thus encouraged, he takes ample risks in a field that is swamped with able and formidable competitors. Mozart's piano concertos may be relatively easy to play but they are notoriously hard to interpret -- that's where the true music-making comes in -- and brave intentions aside, Jarrett cannot do very much with this music beyond playing the notes accurately and cleanly. He brings nearly nothing of his own to the "Concerto No. 23"; much of it is precious and monochromatic, though he finally does generate some animation in the "Finale." Jarrett's tempo for the opening movement of the "Concerto No. 27" isn't out of line, it just seems much slower than it actually is due to his stolid, doggedly literal playing; the larghetto is actually a bit fast, and the rondo lacks point and wit. The adagio movement of the "Concerto No. 21" has the tune that became famous after being used in the film Elvira Madigan yet Jarrett resists poetry of any kind, pounding out the chords in the left hand stiffly. Next to Artur Schnabel's old yet still-treasurable recordings of pointed, imaginative eloquence -- or Daniel Barenboim's renderings of expression and depth -- Jarrett is simply a non-starter in numbers 21 and 27. Another problem is the way Jarrett's piano is miked; it sounds distant, with little in the way of dynamic contrast, surrounded with a slight halo of reverb. One wonders if the engineering is actually fighting Jarrett's sporadic attempts to characterize the music. Dennis Russell Davies and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra come off somewhat better in the deal, with streamlined, flowing, somewhat soft-focused introductions influenced ever so slightly by period-instrument bowing practices that became prevalent in the late 20th century. But at least they use modern instruments, for which many now turned off by grating period-instrument recordings should be thankful. The two-CD set is filled out by Davies leading sturdy, moderately paced, very well-played performances of Mozart's magnificent "Symphony No. 40" and the dolorous "Masonic Funeral Music." (Richard S. Ginell)

Keith Jarret SAMUEL BARBER Piano Concerto Op. 38 - BÉLA BARTÓK Piano Concerto No. 3 - KEITH JARRETT Tokyo Encore

For much of the 1980s, Keith Jarrett balanced his improvisational activities with performances of classical music and contemporary composition. On this disc, with concert recordings from 1984 and 1985, he is heard playing Samuel Barber’s Piano Concerto op. 38 and Béla Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3, and rising to the challenges of these major works. The New York Times praised Jarrett’s playing of the Barber with Dennis Russell Davies in this period (“a sinewy, vigorously lyrical performance … both sensitive and strong”), and the Bartók with Kazuyoshi Akiyama was most enthusiastically received in Japan. After the Tokyo Bartók performance Jarrett returned alone to the stage of the Kan-i Hoken Hall to play a touching improvised encore, also documented on this recording. The album includes liner notes by Keith Jarrett and Paul Griffiths. (This historical album of music by Barber, Bartók and Jarrett is one of two albums issued on May 8th, Keith Jarrett’s 70th birthday, the other album being Creation with new recordings of improvised solo piano.)

Michala Petri / Keith Jarrett BACH Sonatas

 If you have any doubt that the fipple flute is an acceptable substitute for the specified transverse one in these works, this recording could allay it. What is lost is the warm, intimate, breathy, pitch-bending sound of the minimally-keyed wooden instrument, but what is gained is the luculent clarity and (in Petri's hands) spot-on accuracy of the recorder. Instruments at period pitch (which for her own good reasons Petri does not use) would restore some of the warmth, but rarely can you have everything—and here you have so much to be grateful for. Her RCA recording of Handel sonatas (9/91) unveiled a 'new-born' Petri, with immediate rather than programmed responses, the consequence of her partnership with Jarrett, to whose jazz-musical alter ego such things are second nature, and the sea change is equally apparent here.
The performances are free from distracting mannerisms, flowing as naturally as speech and with recorded balance that supports the players' view that even BWV1033-5 are genuine partnerships. The few octave transpositions in the flute/recorder lines, whether enforced or judicious should disturb no one. Though many tempos are on the brisk side, the focused sound of the recorders and Petri's fluency prevent them from seeming hurried. Both players add a good deal of embellishment, but do not 'parrot' one another mechanically, and know when to leave a good tune to speak for itself, thus Menuetto II in BWV1033 is treated to a delicious, free-running variant that touches the original tangentially in the right places, but the Siciliano in BWV1031 is given with affecting simplicity, good taste is invariably the order of the day.
The Petri/Jarrett partnership was made through social pleasure, not in heaven, but it is one to be celebrated; their fresh-faced account of these sonatas merits a place in any collection, whatever others may already be there. (John Duarte / Gramophone)

Keith Jarrett HÄNDEL Suites for Keyboard

Having paid tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach in a sequence of New Series recordings of the Well-tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations and the French Suites, Keith Jarrett now turns his attention to Bach's near contemporary, Georg Friedrich Händel. The project, in fact, has been in preparation for a long time; Jarrett's liner note informs us that he first began to record Händel's keyboard suites some 20 years ago. The present recording is of particular interest for a number of reasons and not least because it is the first of his albums of baroque music to feature the piano - as opposed to harpsichord - since Book One of the Well-tempered Clavier was issued in 1988. Where, in his Bach recordings, Keith Jarrett has striven to obliterate his musical personality ("This music does not need my assistance"), he feels Händel's "basically unknown" solo keyboard music needs a measure of special pleading. And, though he has gone to "the least tampered with editions" of the suites in the interests of "correctness both musicological and musical", in making the case for their reassessment he permits himself some interpretive leeway in matters of tempi and phrasing. The result is an extremely attractive reading of seven of the Suites for Keyboard that can perhaps be more readily related - particularly in the adagio movements, where Jarrett takes full advantage of the lyrical warmth and textural richness of the material - to aspects of the pianist's improvised recordings than can his Bach interpretations. (Or, to put it another way, these pieces, in the right hands, retain the freshness of improvisation). "Händel was a keyboardist, " Jarrett notes, "and his keyboard works should occupy a higher position in our awareness than they do." Keith Jarrett's playing on this recording invites comparison with his interpretation of Dmitri Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues Op. 87 (a work that creates a bridge, via Bachian inspirational sources, from the baroque to the "modern"). Jarrett's Shostakovich prompted John Rockwell to declare, in the pages of the New York Times: "With this recording, Mr. Jarrett has finally staked an indisputable claim to distinction in the realm of classical music. Even in our multicultural, multistylistic age, it is extremely difficult to cross over from one field to another. Mr. Jarrett, having long since established himself in jazz, can now be called a classical pianist of the first rank."

Michelle Makarski & Keith Jarrett JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Six Sonatas for Violin and Piano

Johann Sebastian Bach began work on his six sonatas for violin and harpsichord (BWV 1014-19) while at the courts of Weimar and Köthen and returned to the compositions over several decades, revising and polishing until the years before his death. C.P.E. Bach would later pronounce the pieces “among the best works of my dear father.” Prefiguring the classic duo sonata, violin and keyboard meet on equal terms in this music, and both are challenged by Bach’s compositional demands. The group of sonatas was conceived as a set – six sonatas in six keys, three major and three minor. Bach’s first biographer Forkel wrote that the six sonatas “may be reckoned among Bach’s masterpieces in this genre. They are fugued throughout, and even contain characterful natural canons in dialogue between the two instruments. A master is required to play the violin part, for Bach knew the possibilities of that instrument and spared it as little as he did the harpsichord.”

Michelle Makarski is the violinist here. A player of exceptionally broad interests, committed to ‘classical’ repertoire from the pre-Baroque to New Music, but also experienced in jazz and improvisation, Makarski first came to ECM via Keith Jarrett. She appeared on his New Series album “Bridge of Light”, recorded in 1993. It featured Makarski as soloist on the “Elegy for Violin and String Orchestra” and as Jarrett’s duet partner on the “Sonata for Violin and Piano”. That recording led to other discs with Makarski at ECM ranging from a series of recital discs – beginning with the solo album “Caoine” – to experiments with Tomasz Stanko, John Surman and Dino Saluzzi on the prize-winning “From The Green Hill”, and playing alongside the Hilliard Ensemble in Stephen Hartke’s “Tituli”.

Through the years, Makarski and Jarrett have remained in contact. They first played the Bach sonatas together at Christmas 2008, and returning to the music became a theme of their weekend meetings over the next two years. “Every time she visited we played it again.” Jarrett tells Ethan Iverson in the September 2013 issue of Down Beat.

As Makarski has noted, the approach was the opposite of ‘casual’. “Think of it as the musical equivalent of a time-lapse exposure,” Makarski suggests, “with the camera focused on a process in Nature; planets moving, wrinkles appearing, trees leafing. You don't need to decide anything; you just watch. In our case, we just listened.”

One thinks here also of Jarrett’s early statement when recording Book 1 of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier: “This music does not need my assistance.” The intention, then as now: not to inflict interpretive ‘personality’ on the work. “It’s nutritious because it’s not me,“ Jarrett says. “I’m just throwing myself to the other guy, and asking him ‘Show me something I still don’t know about music’.”

The idea of documenting the music came late in the process: in November 2010 Makarski and Jarrett recorded the sonatas at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. “Even after deciding we’d like to record, the process didn’t much change,” Makarski notes. “What you have is a window on an organic long-term process of exploration and deep listening. It’s a kind of momentary document of a joyously renewed friendship – not a strategically planned project.“