Köln Concert - it was 51 years ago 💫

 

[On the evening of January 24, 1975, something extraordinary happened at the Cologne Opera House.]

"...You don't really think I'm going to perform with this shit. I haven't slept for nights, I have excruciating back pain. As if that weren't enough, I traveled five hours from Zurich to get here to Germany. And I find a rookie piano, out of tune and with broken resonance pedals. Who do you think you're kidding?"

That evening, Jarrett was extremely nervous, pumped full of painkillers, wearing a back brace. It wasn't the right night to play. His fury struck Vera Brandes, not even twenty years old. Too young to organize a concert at the Cologne Opera. Too inexperienced to deal with someone like Keith Jarrett. Jarrett had asked for a Steinway to be brought on stage, his favorite piano, the one on which he had cultivated the art of improvisation for years.

Something had gone wrong, and the Steinway never arrived. Although many in the organization were beginning to tremble (Jarrett has also become infamous for his prima donna outbursts and his paranoia of perfectionism), the pianist had decided to bring one of the two Bösendorfers backstage as a replacement, after having tested it. But that evening was supposed to be special, and, in a stroke of bad luck, due to a mix-up, the other Bösendorfer was brought on stage instead, the one with the broken pedal and not even in tune. The one that absolutely shouldn't have been there. Everyone was on the verge of throwing in the towel; except Jarrett, who saw in that adversity an extra incentive to create something exceptional. And he did it, becoming a legend. If you listen to the first track on this album, you hear Jarrett starting off quietly, as if he were studying his "lifelong friend"—the piano—which, like him, wasn't at its best that evening and needed its interpreter to bring out something he'd never done before, not even with a perfectly functioning piano. The broken pedal of the piano, the shattered back of the performer, similar in their imperfection, drew from it a musical emotion never experienced before.

Because, like Yves Bonnefoy, we can truly say: Imperfection is the pinnacle.