On the Emergency of New Köln Concert Recordings
Are you one of those pianists who have given thoughts of recording or performing The Köln Concert live? If so, be mindful of ramifications of other questions and considerations which will emerge from this fundamental question.
I shall in the course of this page outline some of these questions and considerations based on my own experience recording The Köln Concert. I have already provided a number of considerations on the column A Brief Discussion of my Recording of The Köln Concert on the previous page. Although, some of the considerations on the column of the brief discussion, were personal and arbitrary. Therefore, I don’t view them all as ramifications, although they are all nevertheless, associated with the fundamental question which I am posing here to you.
Ramifications of the Fundamental Question -
1) Why would you want to record or perform The Köln Concert live? Would it be simply because this music means too much to you and having acquired the published transcription, recording and/or performing this music live would be a viable consideration to you?
2) Would your piano technique be sufficiently developed to play this music?
3) As a classical trained pianist have you had enough experience playing Jazz?
4) As a Jazz trained pianist have you had enough experience playing Classical Music?
5) Would you believe that your interpretation of the transcription could reveal this music in a new light, other than the original or any other interpretation(s)?
6) Have you given considerations to which specific piano you would interpret this music on?
If for any of these questions and considerations your answer(s) happened to be “no”, then you should perhaps think twice before embarking on this ad-
If I may, I would like to use as an example the recording of The Köln Concert by Tomasz Trzcinski [from 2005], to which the Question #3 alone the answer would have been a “no”. Trzcinski is not only a well trained Classical pianist, he is also a composer and conductor in his own right. Yet, while listening to the interpretation of Trzcinski, I found the evolving structures of the Part One of the concert being considerably obscured by many of his eccentricities and rhythmic deviations.
I attribute Trzcinski’s eccentricities to his tendencies to somewhat ‘romanticize’ The Köln Concert. This is not a place where I would indulge into the nature and aesthetics of lyricism, or much less, into the general process of the mental and emotional involvements in musical experiences. However, I would conjecture that in the case of lyricism for the sake of lyricism, meaning contextual-
Where the rhythmic deviations of Trzcinski’s interpretation of Part One of the concert are concerned, they are even more alarming, since they surprising reflect the inaccuracies of his reading of the rhythmic notation provided by the transcription, so as his misinterpretation of Jazz figurations, presumably due to his incomplete familiarity with the Jazz idiom. This assertion alone address the Question #3 stated earlier.
When looking for solutions to avoid excessive rubatos, so as rhythmic deviations, one alternative way I have found most effective, is to assign a fixed inner pulse to the entire concert. For instance, by assigning an inner pulse approximately of a sixteenth note to 264 (eighth note at 132 within the metronomic range), one can more likely bind the entire work together during its execution, as well as, more convincing bond the inner structures within the large structures.
It is important to stress the fact that The Köln Concert cannot be reproduced in its originality, not even by Keith Jarrett, therefore, discarding altogether the idea of imitating the original The Köln Concert. This statement is directly related to the Question #5 and the Question #6 regarding the choice of a piano to interpret The Köln Concert. I would go even farther to assert that the choice of the piano becomes crucial in determining either one’s success or failure to recreate The Köln Concert.
Based on the assertion just stated above, although it might sound too radical, I have formulated my own axiom to the follow: the success of one recreating The Köln Concert is proportional to how close one’s chosen piano sounds to the original piano of The Köln Concert.
The Köln Concert x Piano = Success -
Hence, one’s best odd to succeed recreating The Köln Concert is to approximate one’s choice of piano (its timbre character) to the original piano of The Köln Concert. This statement is not to suggest that the brands of the instruments ought to be the same. Nor to suggest that the acoustical ambience of the room matches closely the Opera House of Cologne.
The outline On the Emergency of New Köln Concert Recordings is part of my own lecture and master class on The Köln Concert work.
Tomasz Trzcinski’s recording of The Köln Concert entitled Blue Mountains (from 2005) is available in CD format and digital download.
Websites: www.tomasz-
www.tomasz-
I strongly recommend Trzcinski’s recording to those interested in recording and/or performing The Köln Concert live. His recording give us a worth presentation of the challenges a pianist can encounter under such an undertake. Besides, during the instances in which Trzcinski appears mostly absorbed in the music, he provides us with convincing moments of interpretations, reassuring us of what he believes to be achievable. And rather than choosing the safe environment of a music studio, Trzcinski undertakes the challenge of performing The Köln Concert before a live audience. More recently, he has produced a new live version of The Köln Concert on video. It is an improvement over his first recording, especially in regard to the correction of so many accidental wrong notes from the first recording.
I would still suggest that Trzcinski study a number of Jazz pianists to improve his familiarity with the Jazz idiom and produce a third version of the concert sometime in the future; and we will possibly make it available in this website.
