Fusions / Œuvres pour piano

Description

An exciting release from SOMM Recordings, featuring 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 sharing the influence of jazz in their work — while highlighting the virtuosity of Earl Wild, one of the greatest American pianists of the 20th century. George Gershwin, whose compositions spanned jazz, popular music, and classical music, hardly needs an introduction; however, the unique fusion of jazz and classical forms by Nikolai Kapustin — born in the year of Gershwin's death in 1937 — was limited to a niche audience in Russia until his music gained international recognition in the early 2000s. These works, tinged with classical and jazz elements, are vibrantly performed by award-winning pianist Nikolay Medvedev, whom BBC Music Magazine described as a "pianist of mastery and precision," while the Berliner Morgenpost characterized his performances as "a fascinating combination of technical mastery and emotional depth." What distinguishes Nikolai Kapustin as a composer is that, although his music naturally inhabits jazz idioms, everything is carefully notated on the page and not improvised as traditional jazz would be. His Second Piano Sonata, which opens this program, dates from 1989. It is an optimistic four-movement work that blends classical sonata form with jazz elements, requiring a high level of technical skill to manage its complex and syncopated rhythms. The sophisticated harmonic and rhythmic language that Kapustin drew from jazz fusion, bebop, and stride piano is also very present in his Eight Concert Studies from 1984. These pieces are not intended to be played together in an ensemble, and this recital includes five studies, ranging from a thrilling atmospheric stylization of South American carnival to a Joplin-esque ragtime that soars above a powerful left-hand stride. Kapustin's Variations for piano, from 1984, which conclude this recital, are in classical variation form while seeming to contain all imaginable jazz influences. The lively finale is particularly one of Kapustin's most exhilarating compositions. If George Gershwin had not tragically died at the age of 38, he might have completed his projected set of Twenty-Four Preludes for solo piano. He wrote eight, and the first three Preludes were published as a set in 1925. Prelude I is an energetic syncopation exercise, Prelude II is a lyrical blues, and Prelude III brilliantly concludes the set with robust rhythms and further syncopations. In 1932, Gershwin was persuaded to publish The George Gershwin Song-Book for solo piano, and in the 1950s, Earl Wild — described by music critic Harold C. Schonberg as a "super-virtuoso in the Horowitz class" — published two collections of his own unique arrangements of Gershwin's songs. His 7 Virtuoso Studies inspired by George Gershwin — including Fascinatin' Rhythm and the poignant The Man I Love — elevate Gershwin's inherent genius to an exceptional concert level.