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MARTIN ANDERSON
A year ago almost no one in the West had heard of Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin, who was born in 1937. His representation in the discographies was minimal: Nikolai Petrov's recordings of the Second Piano Sonata and an Intermezzo for piano were available on two Olympia CDs (OCD 280 and 273), and that was it. Nor did the music turn up on concert platforms--musicians didn't know about the music any more than the rest of us did. We should have, of course, because the music itself is unique: an idiomatic and convincing fusion of the language of jazz and the structural discipline of classical music--and this is real fusion, not the populist pap currently being paraded in front of the microphones. There are, moreover, almost 100 Kapustin compositions, in the major forms of the Western musical tradition: concertos, sonatas, chamber and instrumental music. Now, at last, the occidental public profile of Kapustin's music has taken a dramatic turn for the better. A major recording company--Hyperion--has taken an interest in his music. Steven Osborne has released a CD of the First and Second Piano Sonatas and 13 of the 24 Jazz Preludes (CDA67159). And a major international pianist has taken up Kapustin in the best way possible: Marc-André Hamelin is currently touring the Second Sonata around the world. Kapustin is now international news.
Earlier this year, in May, Hamelin gave the Western premiere of the Second Piano Sonata at a ''Hamelin weekend'' at Blackheath Concert Halls in southeast London, and Kapustin made the journey from Moscow for the occasion--not an easy decision, I imagine, since he does not like flying, and the trip meant three days in a train across the length of Europe. An opportunity to interview such a rare visitor--and such an unusual musical phenomenon--was not to be missed. But
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my rudimentary Russian is much worse than Kapustin's English (which he reads well but, unpracticed, is reluctant to speak), and so we called on the help of Ashot Akopian, general director of the Russian recording production company A-RAM, to translate. Kapustin, a dapper, silver-haired, well-trimmed chap of moderate height, with elegant moustache, shaded glasses, and a cigarette never far from his mouth--you can almost imagine him taking a role in...