The year 1958 was a big one for the Dave Brubeck Quartet. A tour of Europe was immediately followed by a US State Department tour through Poland, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Ceylon, Iran, and Iraq. The experience later inspired the album Jazz Impressions of Eurasia and the composition ‘Blue Rondo a la Turk’ from Time Out. For several decades the only documentation of this tour was Dave Brubeck Quartet In Europe from 5 March, 1958. Now, several recordings have come to the surface of this historic tour (they were the first jazz group to tour behind the Iron Curtain).

The Debut in the Netherlands 1958 concert comes from the first part of the tour, so it is surprising to see this Concertgebouw concert in Amsterdam given as 26 November 1958. I have checked this date with Darius Brubeck, who accompanied his parents on the three month long tour (having received special dispensation from the school authorities to do so) who well remembers the concert: “My mother, brother Mike and I and the Quartet stayed at the Grand Hotel Kraznapolsky, which still dominates the central square and is not far from Concertgebouw.”

He wonders if the given date on the CD actually refers to the transmission date of the concert on Dutch radio. From the same tour, we do have the complete Hanover concert on 26 February, 1958 that includes the totality of the numbers included on Debut in the Netherlands 1958 – ‘Two Part Contention’, ’Someday My Prince Will Come’, ‘These Foolish Things’, ‘One Moment Worth Years’, ’For All We Know’, ‘Watusi Drums’, ‘The Wright Groove’, ’The Duke’, and ‘Take the A Train’. In other words, at this stage of the tour the quartet were broadly adhering to a playlist, plus one or two requests or quartet favourites, such as ‘St. Louis Blues’.

There is not much to choose between the Hanover concert and the Amsterdam concert – this was a remarkably inventive group, and as ever the interplay between Desmond and Brubeck is fascinating, and Joe Morello's interventions well judged – he was an excellent drummer who never sounded as good away from the quartet.

Maybe it was the crowd in the Hague that tips the balance in favour of Debut in The Netherlands 1958, their enthusiastic response seems to have got the adrenaline going, so lifting the performance.