June 13: The French Suites (Keith Jarrett, harpsichord)

On ornery geniuses

Our great artists are forged by a divine spark and are shaped by determination. The relentlessness required to pursue greatness often goes hand in hand with a certain difficulty of manner.

Most of the time, great performers have an awareness of their prickliness and hold it in reserve. Some, though, wear it as a badge of honor. Think of Miles Davis showing up to a gig two hours late and then playing with his back to the crowd, or Charles Mingus firing a rifle in his apartment during an interview, or the 1960’s Bob Dylan half-engaging journalists with a bemused contempt. I once saw the American baritone Thomas Hampson admonish a Carnegie Hall crowd for murmuring between songs and admonish them again for not clapping loud enough after one ended.

Bach himself was thrown in jail for a month after mouthing off to the Prince.

Keith Jarrett is one of my favorite musicians, and a notoriously difficult and humorless man. At two of his concerts I attended, he laid into the audience for breaking his demands for silence. (Infractions included coughing and shifting in seats). During what turned out to be his final public performance in 2017, he had a mic set up twenty feet from the piano which he used to complain about his uncomfortable pants, Trump tweets, and flash photography.

(A few years ago, I uploaded a series of his in-concert rants to YouTube, drawn from bootleg recordings that I otherwise enjoyed. This was not very sporting of me. Another writer called me out on it.)

In between these dumb diatribes, Keith improvised some of the most beautiful music you can imagine. Keith is equally adept at extemporizing blues and gospel inspired grooves, American pastorals, and extended bursts of wild dissonance. Here’s a flavor from Venice in 2006, a genius at work.

I’ve had a hard time reconciling the beauty of the music with contempt he expresses towards his adoring audience. (Keith would say he’s just trying to concentrate, and that crowds in Japan don’t cough, or that the audience is capable of respect, but they’ve lost their way in our selfish times, blah blah blah.)

Maybe the punch line is self-inflicted. At that final show, just as the house lights darkened, my friend whispered to me, “People come because Keith will yell at them.”

At any rate, Keith has left a legacy of extraordinary recorded music, including many of the great Bach keyboard works. Today we’re listening to his excellent 1993 harpsichord recording of the French Suites (BWV 812-817) on ECM Records. (They were so named after Bach’s death because they were written ‘in the French manner’; they’re actually closer to the Italian style, but here we are centuries later, the names have stuck.)

Keith always creates beautiful and serious music. For the French Suites, he lays back and luxuriates whenever it’s called for, and the dances jam. It’s all graceful and lovely. Keeeeeeith!!

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Here are highlights. Let’s start with the stomping, swinging gigues. Harpsichord be killin’.

From the C Minor Suite No. 2:

The Eb Major Suite No. 4:

The E Major Suite No. 6:

Keith shines in the majestic opener of the Eb Major Suite:

The complex and sometimes parallel lines of the Courante in the B Minor Suite No. 3:

The Gavotte of the G Manor Suite No. 5 is like a puzzle solving itself:

Record-scratch harmonic turn in the opener of the B Minor No. 3 (0:06):

And let’s conclude with the regal Sarabande of Suite No. 6:

Virtual hugs for Keith as he recovers from his stroke at his New Jersey ranch — you are loved! Hope you’re hanging in there.