Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 09/16/2009, uploaded on 12/09/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Final, from Eight Concert Etudes                     Nikolai Kapustin

Nikolai Kapustin is a Ukrainian-born pianist who received a thorough classical training at the Moscow Conservatory before beginning a career in jazz as a pianist, composer and big band leader.  He is a prolific composer with over one hundred opuses to his name.  Kapustin's compositions fuse classical structures such as sonatas, concertos, or preludes and fugues with an idiomatic musical language that is purely jazz.  Although his works often sound improvisatory, no real improvisation is required of the performer, as Kapustin meticulously notates every small note and inflection.  The Eight Concert Etudes Op. 40 represent an integration of virtuosic technique with jazz harmonies and rhythms, and are an electrifying successor to the grand nineteenth-century tradition of dazzling concert etudes.    Janice Fehlauer

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.