This is 150 minutes of Keith Jarrett at the absolute apex of his solo powers. On the heels of the colossal Sun Bear Concerts, released as a ten-LP set (six CDs in modern parlance) in 1981, Jarrett and his record label, ECM, must have felt the market at risk of oversaturation – issued on LP at the time, the Bregenz concert was reissued on CD only to be deleted, and amazingly the Munich concert has never been available on CD until now. Quite why the Munich concert alone, among all Jarrett’s recordings, should have been withheld is beyond me: the sound is stellar, the playing is consistently inventive, and in many places extraordinarily passionate.

It’s hard to pick favourite sections of these concerts. A gimme would be the first part of Bregenz, a long, gospel-tinged, foot-stomping passage that achieves the transcendental rapture Jarrett’s solo concerts is known for. Part III of Munich attains similar ekstasis, but it takes 20 minutes of the most exquisite wanderings through mazes of sounds to get there – as if you can hear Jarrett thinking aloud, tackling his themes with a big-handed, heart–on-sleeve approach worthy of Oscar Peterson or Errol Garner in places, before retreating to his more familiar impressionism when it becomes too much. It’s a musical tease, and a fascinating one at that, and the payoff is immense when it hits.

Elsewhere, you get extended bits of Bach and Bartók chucked in the mix, or playful right-hand glissandi against static left-hand vamps – the kind of stuff Jarrett could do on autopilot back in the day, and which no one else has ever been able to emulate, for my mind. He takes us to outer space at the end of Munich with some string plucking and foot stomping before the palate cleansing encores. Both concerts feature his ravishing gospel ballad, ‘Heartland’ as one of the encores and it’s a treat both times.

The package comes with notes by Jarrett about his art and a fascinating, poetic essay by German critic Peter Ruedl, which is charmingly pretentious (‘Keith Jarrett’s solo concerts are all acts of renunciation and surrender’ etc.), and some actual poetry to boot. It’s very ECM, very Keith Jarrett, and actually rather good.

Richard Mohr