La Scala documents the solo concert Keith Jarrett gave at Milan's Teatro alla Scala on 13 February 1995, the first recital by an improvising musician in the opera house. Released by ECM in 1997, it was his first solo concert recording in five years, after Vienna Concert. It holds two long, entirely improvised sets and the encore Over The Rainbow.
As in his other solo concerts, Jarrett arrived without themes and tried to clear his mind, so that the music could take shape on the spot. The performance was recorded live in the theatre and later remixed at Rainbow Studio in Oslo by Jan Erik Kongshaug and Manfred Eicher, who is credited as executive producer. Jarrett also wrote the liner note. At the time, the critic of Il Messaggero predicted the concert would become a record, recalling that Jarrett taped his concerts and released only the best, as with The Köln Concert.
La Scala, Part I lasts almost 45 minutes and grows slowly from quiet, closely voiced chords. Along the way it passes through a section with an Eastern colour and builds toward a gospel-like close. In Salon, Michael Ullman described it as built on a gently falling phrase, with passages in which Jarrett repeats a simple left-hand figure at length. Part II, about 28 minutes, is more compressed and agitated, opening with nervous single-note runs before the lyricism of the first set returns. Later it settles into the low register and a brighter, Gershwin-like passage, then fades out. The disc closes with the Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg standard, which ECM calls Jarrett's most loved encore, met by a long ovation from the hall.
The Italian press greeted the concert as an event. La Repubblica wrote that "it was more than the expected triumph", and other papers reported half an hour of applause and five encores. Reviewing the record in 2012, BBC Music Magazine praised the patience of the first part and called the second "a riotous tour de force". Ullman, writing in 1997, was more measured, noting some stretches of repetition while crediting the playing's intelligence and integrity.
CD, ECM 1640, first released on 12 May 1997.
