From the man who probably singlehandedly put the totally improvised solo piano recital on the map in the 1970s and 1980s, Bordeaux Concert is inevitably measured by the impossibly high standards of the artist's finest work in this genre.

Taken in that context, there are more puzzling allusions in this album than Ezra Pound's Cantos – it opens in edgy mood, the initial subject contrasted between inside (consonance) and outside (dissonance) variation, a point of reference that is abstracted, inverted, and extended until it becomes a signpost receding a fog of variations.

When a soliloquy-like coda emerges, it initially appears as a fresh canto, but emerges as an unrelated coda that marks the work's conclusion. Edginess persists, as fresh ideas are considered culminating in melodic reflection, a rhythmic episode and conclusion. Then edginess gives way to a rhythmic episode with a bump in time to the music (foot? pedal? soundboard being struck?) with open chords resolved by a down home, bluesy turnaround eagerly applauded by the audience.

Yet no conclusive mood emerges, fragmentary and episodic it results in an album without a satisfactory centre. Blue notes, in applause power, rate high, abstraction less so on the audience's Richter scale.