A major figure in the European avant-garde since the 1960s, German pianist Joachim Kühn has been captivating listeners for decades with his accessible, soulful piano sound combined with an avant-gardist's drive for musical freedom.

The double album Échappée, Kühn's debut for the redoubtable Swiss label Intakt, was recorded when the pianist was aged 80, and is testament to an energy and creative impulse undimmed by age. Thirteen tracks of solo piano from a musician with a ‘challenging’ reputation, stretched over 97 minutes might seem a daunting prospect – particularly as the opening scene-setter is the spikily aggessive and thunderous ‘Höre Und Sehe’ [‘Hear and See’], which resembles nothing so much as a kind of hollering, sabre-rattling cavalry charge on the keyboard – but fear not, gentle listener.

This is as gripping (in a very different way) as any of Bill Evans or Keith Jarrett's solo extemporisations, especially the lengthy ‘My Long Life With Brother Rolf’ [the Kühn siblings were apparently very fond of improvising at the piano together]; just don't expect tranquil, crystalline improvisation, more a frenetic gallop which, upon repeated listening, reveals an underlying sense of structure beneath the seemingly random flurries of notes.

Kühn's ability to mix precision with unfettered expression is also evident on the likes of ‘Soundmotiv’, ‘Frequenzen’ and the epic title track, which seem to draw as much on the classical greats such as Ravel and Chopin as they do Bud Powell and Art Tatum. All in all, it makes for a rewarding journey across its one-and-a-half hours. The sleeve notes reveal how the album came about: in December 2022 the pianist began composing at his home studio in Ibiza whenever he felt inspired. After a break he would listen back to what he'd recorded, reject it, but also aimed to improve it. This process of improvement through replay, editing, rewriting, refinement and re-recording has worked brilliantly. Échappée's surface spontaneity is hard-won and the result of much work, as much a feat of editorial judgement as it is of musical skill and gut instinct – but however it was made, it is something of a triumph. Give it a listen.