A Brief Discussion of my Recording of The Köln Concert

During my initial preparation prior to begin recording The Köln Concert, I decided to take into account a number of aspects associated with the original recording of The Köln Concert by Keith Jarrett. These aspects were outlined into two groups of considerations, and they may appear rather daunting to most  readers:

The first group of considerations focuses on the aspects of the concert which I viewed as Eventual Aspects, in the sense of belonging to the event of the concert as oppose to as being essential to the music of the concert. An alternative way to view some of the Eventual Aspects is to classify them as External Aspects of the musical work. For instance, the applause of the audience during the intervals separating the parts of the musical work are all one Eventual Aspect from the concert, whereas the foot stamps (rhythmic inclusions) executed by Jarrett accompanying the piano improvisations in Parts 1A and 2A are both External Aspects of the musical work. And finally, the broad sensorial experience of Jarrett during his creative process in the course of his playing, are all External Aspects of the work. By no means here, I am to suggest that the classified External Aspects are not indeed the internal condition of his creative process.

Hence, the group of considerations outlined regarded as Eventual Aspects from the original concert or External Aspects of the work, have all been omitted from my recording for the following reasons:

a) my recording is a studio recording, and since there is no live audience present in the studio, it has no applause;

b) the studio where I recorded the music did not have a stage floor to provide the acoustical effects for the foot stamps, as heard in the original recording of Jarrett at the Opera House in Cologne;

c) my sensorial experience during the recording was far too restricted as result of my a priori empirical knowledge of the musical work, not to mention my objectivity towards it;

The second group of considerations focuses on all the aspects from the original recording of The Köln Concert which I viewed as essential to the musical work. For instance, I could not have recorded the Köln Concert without the transcription by Yukiko Kishinami and Kunihiko Yamashita -revised by Keith Jarrett and published by Schott Japan Company Ltd. Hence the transcription is to be viewed as an Essential Aspect to the musical work. The alternative way to view the Essential Aspects to the musical work, as suggested in the first group of considerations, is to classify them as Internal Aspects of the musical work. For instance, the original recording of The Köln Concert is an Internal Aspect of the musical work as well as an Essential Aspect to the musical work, as in the case of the published transcription. In addition, the original recording of The Köln Concert encompasses the first group of considerations viewed as Eventual and External Aspects, although the first group of considerations turned out to be not essential to the musical work as I stated earlier.

Finally, the characteristics associated with the unique timbres of the piano in the original recording are all one Essential Aspect to the musical work. Moreover, I would not have recorded The Köln Concert without a close match to the original sound of the piano of The Köln Concert.

However, one External Aspect of the work has been inserted: I improvised over the improvisations  (more specifically over the harmonic structures) in segments of Parts 1A, 2A and 2C of the concert.

Yet to be answered, remains the ultimate question to anyone who wishes to record The Köln Concert: how can one justify or validate a new recording version of The Köln Concert without overplaying one’s own hands, or more specifically, overplaying an already remarkable achievement of originality? For such a question I have absolutely no answers! However, it is with this question in mind that I have decided to provide the readers (listeners) with a forum for exploration.

There are so many other related topics I would wish to discuss in correlation with possible new versions of The Köln Concert to emerge, mostly from the perspective of its modernization and its new styles of marketing strategies.

I do look forward to further discussing those topics and editing them to this page in the future.

The Masterpiece

The prominent composition teacher mademoiselle Nadia Boulanger once said she could not explain or pinpoint what makes a musical work of art a masterpiece. Neither a profuse thorough analysis and dissection of a musical work nor her acquaintance with a taskmaster such as Igor Stravinsky, could reveal to her understanding, the nature of a masterpiece in a musical work. Although, she could identify it, and the realization of this identification, she called -later in life- an act of faith.

I like the view of Thomas S. Kuhn (in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions), if I may step in on the realm of philosophical reflections on the repercussion of scientific discoveries and achievements in science over  the centuries. Kuhn identifies major works of science as paradigms for how these works change our views to unprecedented new ways of viewing what we formerly understood (or believed) and once for all, affecting our understanding and views of subsequent new works of discoveries.¹

Moreover, it suffices to say that The Köln Concert is the most revealing piano improvisation in the history of the piano and its literature. For The Köln Concert attests to us to the unprecedented possibilities of what we had not previously imagined of an artist being capable of. For sure, we hear of a dozen pianist-composers such as Franz Liszt  who improvised on the piano. However, Liszt does not validate The Köln Concert, on the contrary, The Köln Concert -more specifically Keith Jarrett- validates Liszt. Likewise, -as in the case of scientific paradigms identified by Kuhn- The Köln Concert affects our understanding and views of subsequent new works of discoveries. And even though I seem to imply the forwarded temporal inevitability of its historic course, its arrow of time moves indeed in both directions of time.

One of the most intriguing aspects of The Köln Concert  is its progression (and transgression) through the course of music history. Moreover, the course of the concert may well be simplified in two ethical groups of classifications in its over all transmission. In one group we have the cognates of African and Middle Eastern elements in the tradition of Jazz and in the other group the Austro-German elements in the tradition of Western European Music.       

Chronological references from The Köln Concert to the evolution of African-Middle Eastern and Western Music

African and Middle Eastern Elements

Austro-German Elements

Jazz

Bach    Haydn    Mozart    Schubert    Beethoven    Mendelssohn    Brahms    Hindemith

Course of History

¹ For further reading on parallels of scientific works and musical works, I invite you to read my essay entitled 300 Years of Tonal Gravity on the page of High Sonic Physics in the Nuclear Music Journal in this same website.

The Transcription

When I first came across the published transcription of The Köln Concert, I browsed through the transcription and was quite surprised to how it sounded so close to the original recording of which I was well familiar with. I never questioned to whether my technical and musical skills would be sufficient for me to play the concert. In fact, I looked at the transcription and saw it as a gift from heaven! ²

There were many aspects of the published transcription which I founded very appealing. For instance, almost all the notes had been transcribed and their rhythmic figurations were very well grouped within the guidelines of conventional musical notation. There was also an aspect which I like to refer  to as normalization, to which many discrepancies of the left hand parts were normalized to appear more consistent in counterpart with the spontaneity of the recording. I was pleased with the fact that the publishers choose not to edit most of the articulations in the music, so as the fingerings associated with the notes. For the aspiring pianist wishing to play The Köln Concert, the lack of fingerings in the publication might appear as a shortcoming. But the true is that fingering in piano playing is not just a system, rather, a science of its own.

Generally speaking, whenever I come across a transcription of an improvisation, I have essentially two thoughts going on in my mind. One thought is telling me that I am looking at an improvisation and the other thought is telling me that I am looking at a written score. I first encountered this paradox still in my teens when I discovered the transcriptions of the albums Time Out and Time Further Out of Dave Brubeck. I subsequently realized that I was going to have to bypass the “scription-visation” of the “trans-and-ins” in order to convincingly reveal the essence of the improvised music I was playing.

Beyond the dichotomy of its nature, a transcription has other further implications as well: for instance, it takes away the sovereignty and originality of a musical work of art, since it not only attests to its repeatability but also to its associated versatility. And yet, isn’t it what goes on in the world of Classical Music in which a pianist might very well sit at the piano and perform the complete set of Chopin’s preludes for a recording device or a live audience? What about the sets of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier performed on the modern piano? Chopin must certainly have written all the set of the preludes to their completion, however curiously enough, the thematic materials could have often surged from his extemporizations at the piano. My point is: the means of which a music was composed (before published in a score) becomes less relevant than its cultural and social-economical implications, for the music is then -even with the acknowledgement of reserved rights- a public domain.³

²  Transcription by Yukiko Kishinami and Kunihiko Yamashita  -revised by Keith Jarrett

    Published by Schott Japan Company Ltd.

³   According to the Copyright Act of 1976 in the USA, The Koln Concert is secured an extension from 28 to 47 years for a total protection of 75 years. Public Law 105-298 of 1998 further extends the renew term of copyrights providing an additional 20 years for the same work.

Alexi Lima

A Forum for The Köln Concert Recordings

Comparative studies in arts can often serve as vehicles to elucidate our understanding, or if not at least, our appreciation for the complexities of art forms and their various representations. For instance, the pianist Glenn Gould justified recording the Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach a second time (twenty-six years later), by asserting that the new advances in recording technology made it possible for him to record the work again in ‘stereo audio’, contrasting with his early ‘mono’ recording version of the work. He also alleged that, although in the early version of the variations, they were well contrasted in their individual entities throughout his brilliant execution, in the consecutive version, he was looking for a more unifying interrelationship of the work as whole.

If you are enough familiar with The Köln Concert original recording and my recording (or any other professional recording) of the work, I would like to invite you to write your personal thoughts or critical viewpoints of the interpretations.

[Please let us all be thoughtful and respectful in our own formulated opinions and avoid suggestive vulgarism.]

There are three further aspects of Keith Jarrett’s recording and my recording which I find worth specifying for the sake of comparisons among the recordings:

Bösendorfer 7 foot

Fazioli F308 10 foot/2 inches

Clarity of Tones

Inferior

Superior

Uniformity of Timbres

Inferior

Superior

Dynamics Range

Inferior

Superior

Ratios of Tone Decay

Similar

Similar

Individuality of Tones

Similar

Similar

Keith Jarrett on the Bösendorfer

Alexi Lima on the Fazioli F308

Touch Sensitivity

Greater Gradation

Less Gradation

Note Inflections

More Frequent

Less Frequent

Rubato Insertions

More Frequent

Less Frequent

Tempi

Similar

Similar

Damper Pedaling

Similar

Similar

Rhythmic Insertions

Similar

Similar

Keith Jarrett’s Recording

Alexi Lima’s Recording

Medium

Analogue

Digital 32 Bit Fluctuation

Ambience

Live at Opera House

Studio Lexicon PCM 92

Stereo Image

Narrower

Wider

Recording Length

66:10

62:10

Sound Coloration

Warm

Not Warm

Over-all Characteristics of the Pianos

Over-all Evaluation of the Executions

Over-all Recording Parameters

The Ultimate Question