Kapustin: Piano Music
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Brand: OSBORNE,STEVENComposer: Nikolai Kapustin
Performer: Steven Osborne
Edition: Music CD
Format: Import
CD Release Date: 2000-06-13
Music Label: Hyperion UK
Soundtracks:
- Sonata for piano No. 1 'Sonata-Fantasia' Op. 39: Vivace
- Sonata for piano No. 1 'Sonata-Fantasia' Op. 39: Largo
- Sonata for piano No. 1 'Sonata-Fantasia' Op. 39: Scherzo
- Sonata for piano No. 1 'Sonata-Fantasia' Op. 39: Allegro molto
- Preludes (24) for piano in Jazz Style No. 3, Op. 53/3: No. 3
- Preludes (24) for piano in Jazz Style No. 7, Op. 53/7: No. 7
- Preludes (24) for piano in Jazz Style No. 15, Op. 53/15: No. 15
- Preludes (24) for piano in Jazz Style No. 13, Op. 53/13: No. 13
- Preludes (24) for piano in Jazz Style No. 19, Op. 53/19: No. 19
- Preludes (24) for piano in Jazz Style No. 5, Op. 53/5: No. 5
- Preludes (24) for piano in Jazz Style No. 18, Op. 53/18: No. 18
- Preludes (24) for piano in Jazz Style No. 17, Op. 53/17: No. 17
- Preludes (24) for piano in Jazz Style No. 23, Op. 53/23: No. 23
- Preludes (24) for piano in Jazz Style No. 11, Op. 53/11: No. 11
- Preludes (24) for piano in Jazz Style No. 12, Op. 53/12: No. 12
- Preludes (24) for piano in Jazz Style No. 10, Op. 53/10: No. 10
- Preludes (24) for piano in Jazz Style No. 9, Op. 53/9: No. 9
- Sonata for piano No. 2, Op. 54: Allegro molto
- Sonata for piano No. 2, Op. 54: Scherzo - Allegro assai
- Sonata for piano No. 2, Op. 54: Largo
- Sonata for piano No. 2, Op. 54: Allegro
Music reviews of Kapustin: Piano Music
Music Review: Good imitations of various styles of Jazz - so what's all the fuss about?
Rating: 3 Stars
Obviously, judging from the previous reviews, there is an enthusiastic public for Kapustin. In my case, it is a name that came to the periphery of my attention when the CD of Marc-André Hamelin was released. I didn't really read the reviews, but everything Hamelin tackles is going to be interesting, so I put it somewhere on the wish list I keep on the back of my mind. Then, one of the rare times I physically went to the used record shop, I chanced on this CD by Steven Osborne (which came out in 2000 and consequently predated Hamelin's recording) and grabbed it. I should have read the reviews first.
I guess I expected Kapustin's piano music to sound like some post-Prokofiev, or post-Mossolov: many notes, pounding, dynamic, reasonably dissonant. Wide off the mark. Read the reviews: they are all quite appropriate in their description. This in Jazz, in fact. Good imitations of various styles of American Jazz - and not being very knowledgeable in the idiom, I'll take the word of the other reviewers for which various styles are being imitated.
So if you are into Jazz, chances you will like Kapustin - and if you are not, chances are, you won't be interested.
That said, I wonder what the fuss is really about. Even if you are a lover of Jazz, I don't think you will hear anything in Kapustin you haven't heard before, that was developed by many American Jazz musicians. Kapustin writes good imitations - but little more, it seems to me.
A number of 20th Century classical composers have used Jazz in their compositions: think of Ravel's Concerto in G and Violin & Piano Sonata, Antheil's Jazz Sonata, Stravinsky's Ragtime, Piano Rag Music and Ebony Concerto, think of Copland, Bernstein, think even of Bernd-Alois Zimmermann and many others, think of Nancarrow's player piano - not to mention Gershwin. But when they did, they never just wrote plain Jazz. They digested Jazz, they metabolized it in their own language and style. Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto isn't Jazz, it's Stravinsky. That's what makes all these compositions so great.
Or: many Jazz musicians have been happy to play in whichever predominant style, but some have developed unique styles of their own. Within the idiom, they've developed something unique, that was grounded into the Jazz vocabulary and style but still developed it in new directions that were not just imitations or elaborations of older styles.
Or: it can be the other way around. One of my favorite versions of Bach's Goldberg Variations (I must have over sixty) is the one made by John Lewis, the pianist of the Modern Jazz Quartet (and NOT the "Golden Gate Quartet", as a slip of mind had made me type first; thanks Andrew Billek for pointing out the error), with his wife Mirjana, under the title "The Chess Game" (The Chess Game and The Chess Game, Vol. 2). Mirjana plays the theme and each variation "straight", on the harpsichord (and pretty well, too), and after each John turns out a Jazz impro on the piano: Jazz variations on Bach's variations. And how authentically Jazzy Bach can sound under the fingers of Lewis is wonderful.
None of that with Kapustin, I find. I don't hear any personal style of Kapustin, any specific Kapustin personality. This is not "Jazz according to Kapustin" or "Kapustin's way with Jazz". He just writes imitations of various styles of American Jazz. At the most, there is a little bit of Prokofiev in the percussiveness of the 2nd Sonata's scherzo, and the wild drive of the same's finale in boogie-woogie style vaguely - oh so vaguely - brings to mind Nancarrow.
So again, what's the fuss? Is it that Kapustin is a Russian Jazzman? So? So there were Russian Jazz musicians. Which proves... what exactly? That the Soviet regime wasn't so evil, after all, as it allowed that degenerate bourgeois musical form? Or that it is not a coincidence that the regime finally crumbled, as, like the French Ancient Regime monarchy in 1789, it had long lost the cultural battle? There never was a Texan balalaika virtuoso, as far as I know. And I'm not aware that there ever was a Chinese Kapustin, either: maybe that's why the Communists still rule. But still, being Russian doesn't make Kapustin's Jazz more original.
Or is it that he has all the credentials of a great Russian virtusoso, having studied under the famous Goldenweiser? That he is a Jazz musician who wrote down his impros, thus giving him the quasi-status of a Classical musician? A kind of Jazz Busoni or Godowski, as it were? But Kapustin ain't Busoni or Godowski and his Jazz ain't Bach or Chopin (of which Busoni and Godowski made famous "imitations"). Yes, there are many notes, particularly in the 2nd Sonata. It may make the pianism impressive (true that there aren't many cocktail lounge pianists who could play like that), but it doesn't make the Jazz more original.
By the way, I don't have Hamelin's recording for comparison, but Osborne seems to me more than proficient, playing with bounce, zest, dynamism, great syncopation and swing. Maybe Hamelin is heads and shoulders above after all. But that a guy runs a hundred meters in 9"72 doesn't mean that the next guy who runs it at 9"99 is a snail. One of my stars is for Osborne.
It is certainly not my intention to criticize the enthusiasm of the Kapustin enthusiasts. I just want to warn those who don't know what to expect with Kapustin: what you'll get is not post-Prokofiev, not post-Mossolov, but good imitations of various styles of Jazz, whose main originality is possibly to fill these various styles with great keyboard virtuosity.
Still, one positive outcome of my encounter with Osborne's disc is that Hamelin's Kapustin is one CD I can cross off of my wish list.
Description of Kapustin: Piano Music
No Description Available.Genre: Classical Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 13-JUN-2000
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