Brad Mehldau releases 10 Years Solo Live 8-LP vinyl box set

Compiled from 19 performances in the last decade from his European solo concerts, the music has been sequenced in four thematic ‘subsets’: Dark/Light, The Concert, Intermezzo/Rückblick and E Minor/E Major. Mehldau explains the music in the album’s liner notes: “Although it totals around 300 minutes, the order of songs is not arbitrary, and I have tried to tell a story from beginning to end in the way I’ve sequenced it. There is a theme and character given to each four-side set.”

The Dark/Light theme explores versions of Jeff Buckley's ‘Dream Brother’, which is followed by Lennon/McCartney’s ‘Blackbird’, while Mehldau comments further on the third set: “I’m thinking of the penultimate movement of Brahms’s ‘Third Piano Sonata’. ‘Rückblick’ means a look backward, perhaps a reappraisal. Brahms’s Intermezzo movement was a look back at what had taken place in his Sonata before moving to the final movement. Here, the listener is invited to look back to music that was recorded 10 or more years ago, in 2004 and 2005.” The pianist also says the point of the fourth set “is to focus on the rub between the keys of E minor and E major. I return to the theme of dark and light from the first set, now allowing the listener to focus on how ‘dark’ and ‘light’ might manifest in tonality.”

Mehldau is set to visit the UK in December for two concerts at the Wigmore Hall – the first on 17 December will feature selections of his own pieces and a specially commissioned work, the second on 18 December, will be an evening of solo piano improvisations.

– Mike Flynn

For more info on the Nonesuch box set visit www.nonesuch.com