Beauty amid stress: Keith Jarrett at Symphony Center

April 05, 2012|Howard Reich | Arts critic

The gutsiest artists persevere despite difficult circumstances, which is precisely what Keith Jarrett did Wednesday night at Symphony Center – with some pain involved.

For starters, the Hamburg Steinway he usually plays to vivid effect there had been voiced last week for the more demure sounds of Mozart, Jarrett told the audience. This prompted him to turn to an American Steinway for his solo concert, a keenly sensitive pianist battling an instrument he didn't know or love very well.

Worse, toward the end of the recital's first half, Jarrett decided to reach inside the instrument to tap its strings for percussive effect. In so doing, he struck a joint on the fourth finger (next to the pinky) of his left hand, said his manager after the show. Thus when Jarrett returned to the stage for the second half of his concert, he was holding an ice pack to the compromised hand, periodically traveling offstage to get more cold relief for an aching, swelling finger.

Despite all this, Jarrett produced some gorgeous pianism, though not his best. Surely nowhere near the stature of the solo work on his most recent release, "Rio" (ECM), a live album that ranks among the strongest of his long career. The generally short duration of Jarrett's improvisations in Symphony Center's Orchestra Hall suggested the pianist wasn't reaching his freest, deepest forms of expression. Some solos ran roughly a minute, the longest stretched about six and most fell somewhere between.

Throughout, one sensed that Jarrett could develop his themes and ideas only so far. Sustained concentration – the magical chemistry that occurs when pianist, instrument and audience are in synchronicity, as in the "Rio" concert recording – did not appear to be happening.

Even so, Jarrett turned in some of his most poetically voiced pianism toward the end of the performance, when his finger, presumably, throbbed the most. Then, again, by the time Jarrett played "Over the Rainbow," he was more familiar with the Steinway and had begun to tame it a bit. His warmth of tone and delicacy of shading made this a Jarrett "Rainbow" of uncommon beauty.

Jarrett offered strikingly lush but translucent sounds to open the second half of the concert. Having applied ice to his digit throughout the intermission, he proceeded to plunge into an improvisation obviously modeled on the "Ondine" movement of Ravel's "Gaspard de la Nuit." The sequence of upper-register trills in the right hand layered above a serenely floating melody line in the left wasn't as exquisitely complex as Ravel's landmark work, but it yielded glistening tone colors and a fluid, sweeping pianism.

Responding to the sonic brightness of the instrument, Jarrett emphasized an edgy tone and funky, rolling rhythms in Gershwin's "Summertime," the blues-tinged lines in his right hand playing off the repeated notes in his left that musicians call "pedal points." But Jarrett relied on this bass-note device too frequently during this concert, perhaps another indication that he was struggling.

Still, he reaffirmed his knack for deftly changing tone and direction with each improvisation, offering Brahmsian phrasing one moment, Monkish offbeats the next.

Despite the inarguable stress of the occasion, Jarrett made light of it during his stage commentary, at one point addressing his impromptu ice pack as if it were a sock puppet.

It's called grace under pressure, and Jarrett showed plenty.

Twitter @howardreich