The German pianist may only be 28 but this is already the seventh album to carry his name for this label (the last with John Scofield) and all have featured these trio partners. Held's band have recorded interpretations of classical pieces before, but here the whole programme is taken from such composers, including Rachmaninoff, Tournemire, Bartók and Stravinsky. Throughout the mood is reflective and romantic, it's relatively even-paced and if there is any crowd-pleasing the crowd is an erudite one – it's a ballads album with a prelude in the place of a standard, an interludium in place of a torch song. The album's title is taken from the romance in Puccini's ‘Tosca’, chosen because it means hidden harmony, and so has multiple references here: the hidden harmony in the oblique nature of the interpretations of the music, the hidden harmony between the three players, and the hidden harmony sought out and revealed between jazz improvisation and classical composition. I wasn't aware of a link between Jimmy Rowles’ ‘The Peacocks’ and Scriabin's ‘Feuillet D'Album Op.58’ until now, nor that there was a little of Herbie Hancock's ‘Maiden Voyage’ lurking in Mompou's ‘Prélude No. 3’. Whether they are intrinsic in the originals or inserted by Held doesn't really matter; they sound just right. A work of considerable maturity and steadily growing appeal from a most intuitive and integrated trio.