New Vienna is the fourth concert recording to be released from Keith Jarrett’s final
European solo tour. It follows Munich 2016, Budapest Concert and Bordeaux
Concert. Why New Vienna? As Jarrett aficionados will know, his discography already
includes a legendary Vienna Concert (recorded at the Vienna State Opera) whose
music, he once claimed, spoke “the language of the flame itself”, after long years of
“courting the fire”. Keith Jarrett’s 2016 return to the Austrian capital brought the
flames of inspiration to another historic location with lively acoustic properties, the
Golden Hall of the Musikverein, where, at the start of the previous century,
Schoenberg, Berg and Webern had premiered works that challenged and changed
the course of modern music. New Vienna, shaping its new music in the moment, is
near-encyclopedic in scope. The album is issued as Keith Jarrett turns 80.