Clearly, 2007 was a good year for the late bass maestro Charlie Haden’s duets with extraordinary pianists. In March, at Keith Jarrett’s home studio, he had recorded the impromptu partnership with Jarrett that ECM released three years later as the gently glowing, standards-exploring Jasmine. In November, Haden and Brad Mehldau (who had never previously performed as a duo) played a church concert at Heidelberg’s Enjoy Jazz festival, and this set of six classics is the understatedly action-packed result. Whereas on Jasmine Jarrett operated discreetly within Haden’s framework of unhurried walking lines and resonant markers to the chord changes, Mehldau takes fuller advantage of the bassist’s Ornette-tested ability to adapt to an improvised melody when it strays outside the harmony. Mehldau seems to be respectfully adjusting to Haden’s seniority at first, in taking the opening ‘Au Privave’ at a very stately lope – but soon the pair are slyly tugging at the tune, with Haden adjusting his wide-spaced, throbbing tones to Mehldau’s whimsical repeating figures bounced across the registers, bursts of swing, and crowded, onrushing passages. ‘My Old Flame’ is tenderly bluesy and ruminatively expanded in lyrical solos from both players, the 15-minute title-track is jaggedly jaunty and develops as an astonishing long series of cross-rhythmic Mehldau variations, ‘My Love And I’ is a heartfelt ballad that heads into chord-jangling outlands, ‘Everything Happens To Me’ confirms the deep affection of both these freethinkers for a straightforwardly tender tune. It’s music of an unsurprisingly private intimacy, but it speaks volumes.