Nikolai Kapustin: Piano Concerto No. 5 (UK premiere)
Nikolai Kapustin: Piano Concerto No. 5 (UK premiere)
Nikolai Kapustin died in 2020, aged 80+.
He was a composer whose ouevre clusters around jazz-inflected scores usually featuring the piano. Nikolai is accepted as a Soviet composer but he had Ukrainian and Jewish roots. That he wrote no symphonies may suggest that form was not a prime concern for the composer. His music shows a mercurial mind, ever ready to give his musical kaleidoscope a violent shake The 5th piano concerto, is around 30 years old and it has been revived and championed by Frank Dupree. The music is rhapsodic and shows the clear influence of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. To my mind, Kapustin gets away with blue murder by sheer speed and prestidigitation: the listener's senses are overwhelmed by the welter of notes, effects and rhythms that leave little time to think basic thoughts as,"Does this piece have a coherent structure?"
I found it bombastic virtuosic, vivid, exuberant, utterly redundant, vacuous and far behind its time both as a classical work and a notated Jazz score. Sort of light fun while it lasted but I shall not be in a hurry to hear it again. Perhaps I should nominate it for the revival of Friday Night is Music Night. Nikolai was a narrow 'niche' composer, a trivial historic figure.
FULL MARKS, BY THE WAY, TO FRANK DUPREE , THE PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA, AND CONDUCTOR SANTTU-MATHIAS ROUVALI.
Nikolai Kapustin died in 2020, aged 80+.
He was a composer whose ouevre clusters around jazz-inflected scores usually featuring the piano. Nikolai is accepted as a Soviet composer but he had Ukrainian and Jewish roots. That he wrote no symphonies may suggest that form was not a prime concern for the composer. His music shows a mercurial mind, ever ready to give his musical kaleidoscope a violent shake The 5th piano concerto, is around 30 years old and it has been revived and championed by Frank Dupree. The music is rhapsodic and shows the clear influence of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. To my mind, Kapustin gets away with blue murder by sheer speed and prestidigitation: the listener's senses are overwhelmed by the welter of notes, effects and rhythms that leave little time to think basic thoughts as,"Does this piece have a coherent structure?"
I found it bombastic virtuosic, vivid, exuberant, utterly redundant, vacuous and far behind its time both as a classical work and a notated Jazz score. Sort of light fun while it lasted but I shall not be in a hurry to hear it again. Perhaps I should nominate it for the revival of Friday Night is Music Night. Nikolai was a narrow 'niche' composer, a trivial historic figure.
FULL MARKS, BY THE WAY, TO FRANK DUPREE , THE PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA, AND CONDUCTOR SANTTU-MATHIAS ROUVALI.
Comment