Fusions

An exciting release from SOMM Recordings, featuring the Russian-born pianist Nikolay Medvedev, is the aptly named Fusions, which brings together the music of George Gershwin and Nikolai Kapustin—two diverse pianist-composers who share the influence of jazz in their work—while also highlighting the virtuosity of Earl Wild, one of the greatest American pianists of the 20^th century. George Gershwin, whose compositions spanned jazz, popular, and classical music, hardly needs introduction, yet the unique fusion of jazz and classical forms of Nikolai Kapustin—who was born the year of Gershwin’s death in 1937—was limited to a niche audience in Russia, until his music became internationally known in the early 2000s.

These classical and jazz infused works are vividly performed by award-winning pianist, Nikolay Medvedev, whom BBC Music Magazine has named “a pianist with poise and precision,” while the Berliner Morgenpost has described his performances as “a mesmerizing combination of technical mastery and emotive depth.”

What sets Nikolai Kapustin apart as a composer is that, although his music inhabits jazz idioms naturally, everything in it is carefully notated on the page and not improvised as traditional jazz would be. His Second Piano Sonata, which opens this programme, dates from 1989. It’s an optimistic four-movement work that blends classical sonata form with jazz elements, requiring high-level technical skill to manage its complex, syncopated rhythms.

The sophisticated harmonic and rhythmic language that Kapustin derived from jazz fusion, bebop, and stride piano is also very much in evidence in his Eight Concert Études of 1984. These are not intended to be played together as a set, and this recital features five études, ranging from a thrillingly atmospheric stylisation of South American carnival time to Joplinesque ragtime riding above a powerful left-hand stride.