After more than a quarter of a century together the Keith Jarrett Trio has that certain air of invincibility about it, with Jarrett the matador, the beaming Gary Peacock and intense Jack DeJohnette the picadors. Thankfully there was no blood on the stage as Jarrett was disinclined to taunt the audience this time. The bull might even have survived. Clearly satisfied at the end after four encores and seemingly endless trooping on and off the stage with more than 11 minutes of continuous applause at one stage, the 64-year-old master said, rather grandly: “There is still justice somewhere.”

The concert had opened with ‘Tonight’, Leonard Bernstein’s emotion-laden song from West Side Story which had a carefully dramatised feel to it with all the terrain of emotion the song covers carefully explored. Indeed, Sondheim’s line “The world is full of light” could have been Jarrett’s theme for the evening as there was plenty of optimistic clarity and even warmth throughout. Only the long, dark passages of a gripping version of ‘Autumn Leaves’ towards the end of the first set had a brooding interior which was a potent contrast to the remainder of the concert. Jarrett got up to walk to a remote area of the stage to the rear of the piano while Peacock and DeJohnette unceremoniously took the song apart, savouring it like gourmets. With ‘Butch and Butch’ played later there was a link in this performance to the Juan-les-Pins live album, Up For It, as both these songs appeared on that set recorded seven years ago.

The second half was a time for pure rhapsody. The beautiful second song was an exquisite ballad performance and later there was a modest and lovely version of ‘God Bless The Child’ which Jarrett often plays and does so with real care, harking back to the trio’s early days of 1983. Large sections of the audience would have happily camped out in the Festival Hall all night to wait for still one more encore but Jarrett was gone with a final ‘Thank you’.

- Stephen Graham