Lo, poor Bach! Lo, for that matter, poor Domenico Scarlatti and poor Handel. For their ill luck in being born in the same year of 1685, they are being celebrated together in the present year, three not so glorious centuries later. This celebration will doubtless be perceived by the lovers of classical music as the tribute vice pays to virtue. The real danger of course is that the tribute will end up being the one virtue pays to vice.
An example of the dangers inherent in the possibility of winning converts from what might be called other musics was provided by the recital in the middle of March at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall of the eminent, or at least eminently successful, jazz pianist Keith Jarrett. According to the biography contained in the concert program, Mr. Jarrett has recently forsaken the worldwide performance of the “spontaneously composed and improvised solo-piano concerts” which have occupied him for a decade. The recordings of these concerts, along with studio tapings, have sold “over five million copies worldwide.” One live concert recording, from a performance in Cologne, has sold “over one million copies, making it the most popular piano recording ever released.”
Having given up this artistic goldmine, Mr. Jarrett is now devoting himself to playing a demanding portion of the traditional keyboard repertory. Since 1982 he has performed the Second and Third Concertos of Bartok, the immensely difficult Concerto of Samuel Barber, two solo concertos of Mozart, and a Mozart
