The best composer of piano music alive today is in his late 60s and lives
in relative obscurity in a Moscow apartment. You've never heard of him, but his
name is Nikolai Kapustin.
Imagine a composer who picks up where Gershwin left off, integrating the language of jazz into classical idioms with total, natural ease. Imagine that this composer uses the pianistic idioms of Rachmaninoff and Chopin, the contrapuntal intricacy of Bach and the brilliant vocabulary of jazz virtuoso Oscar Peterson. Kapustin does all of that.
It was not quite two years ago that I first popped in a disc featuring Kapustin's music. Within minutes, I was in love.
Friends, family and colleagues have since accused me of an obsession, though some have joined me in my enthusiasm. Today, after long and intense examination of his music, I'm more convinced than ever of Kapustin's greatness.
Now, you've got a chance to hear Kapustin for yourself. On Sunday [March 20], teen-age prodigy Adam Golka will present the first Fort Worth performance of Kapustin's monumental Piano Sonata No. 1. This auspicious event will mark the first local performance of any of Kapustin's major, multi-movement works.
And it's about time. For months after I discovered him, I had to rely on burned discs and downloaded, photocopied scores to experience Kapustin's music, sometimes falling back on the "fumble and curse" method at my own piano. Then my sister, an enthusiastic amateur pianist who lives in Cincinnati, ran into a graduate student at the Cincinnati Conservatory who graciously shared his clandestine supply of Kapustin scores and recordings.
But there are signs that the composer's recognition is expanding markedly outside of Russia. In summer 2004, famed Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin released a CD of his music. Last June, Darin Tysdal performed the first movement of Kapustin's Sonata No. 1 at the Cliburn Foundation's International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs — and won the "Most Creative Programming" award from an intrigued jury. A few months later, HMV Japan released several high-priced but excellent recordings of Kapustin performing his own music, revealing one of the most technically gifted pianists who has ever lived. Equally significant, the Music Trading Company began publishing legal, copyrighted scores of the music, which can now be ordered online or from good sheet-music stores.
In the meantime, I began an e-mail correspondence with the composer in which he revealed a remarkable modesty and surprisingly low-key existence.
He was born in Stalinist Ukraine in 1937, and his childhood included evacuation in the wake of the German invasion in World War II, as well as piano training with a protégé of the great Russian romantic Alexander Glazunov. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Alexander Goldenweiser, and, as a student, was intensely interested in the Western avant-garde, as well as the Russian tradition.
Kapustin began playing jazz piano as a teen in the early 1950s and toured as a pianist with Russian big bands in the 1960s and 1970s, at the same time quietly composing concert music that was in the classical tradition but was totally imbued with the sound and aura of jazz.
Today, he lives modestly in Moscow and eschews publicity and travel. "My living conditions suit me," he wrote to me. "We have an apartment. As to a dacha or a car, my wife and especially I never wanted to buy them because it would be an unnecessary burden for us."
When I tried to arrange a meeting with him during my visit to St. Petersburg in January, he declined, saying that he was about to undergo an eye operation and was concentrating on finishing his Opus 125, a sonata for flute and piano.
His list of works looks remarkably like Chopin's or Rachmaninoff's: dominated by solo piano works, but with a generous dose of concertos, sonatas and chamber works — as well as a monumental set of 24 preludes and fugues, in homage to J. S. Bach.
Kapustin's music reflects a gigantic soul, with an extraordinary optimism and love of life. All of it is remarkable for the Schubertian gift for spinning melody after melody and, even more so, for the gorgeous pianistic sonorities. If anything, he surpasses Liszt, Chopin and Rachmaninoff in his ability to make the piano resonate with beautiful noise.
It is largely very difficult music, on a par with Rachmaninoff and Liszt in its technical challenges. However, Kapustin has not neglected writing deliberately simple music, as one can see with his Sonatina, Opus 100, which Hamelin recorded. As Hamelin says, Kapustin's music is generally extremely difficult, but because of the remarkably skillful way it falls in the hands, it's not as hard as it sounds. It's also remarkable in that it is immediately accessible and appealing to virtually any music lover but stands up to exacting critical scrutiny and analysis.
The world discovered the aging composer Astor Piazzolla in Argentina in the 1980s and 1990s. In a similar fashion, the music world is today — belatedly — discovering Kapustin. Sunday's performance at Texas Christian University is a notable first for piano buffs in Fort Worth, but it certainly will not be the last time that music lovers in these parts hear of Nikolai Kapustin.
Kapustin on record
HMV Japan offers several impressive discs of Kapustin performing his own music, by himself and in collaborations. Last Recording features the composer in two large-scale sonatas — the maniacally moody No. 7 and the Scriabin-esque No. 12 — as well as numerous shorter works. A two-disc set of the Preludes and Fugues includes all 24 of his monumental studies in counterpoint as a well as an achingly beautiful sonata for violin and piano and several short works for cello. A disc devoted to chamber music features the composer collaborating in his quintet for piano and strings and works for cello, flute or flutes and piano as well as a remarkable, jazzy string quartet.
HMV Japan has also released a disc of Kapustin playing his Chopin-inspired set of 24 preludes and another that includes his Eight Concert Etudes, the Sonata No. 1 and the Baroque-influenced Suite in the Olden Style.
These releases can be ordered at www.hmv.co.jp.
Two releases from Hyperion are more readily available in U.S. record stores and can also be ordered online. One features Steven Osborne performing the Sonata No. 1 and a generous selection of preludes; the second features Marc-André Hamelin performing the Sonata No. 6, the Eight Concert Etudes and more.
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