NIKOLAI KAPUSTIN: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 + 6

When Nikolai Kapustin’s music was discovered by a wider audience in the West, it certainly came as a shock: Who was this Soviet composer, whose music mostly resembled an Oscar Peterson improvisation, but was notated in heavily detailed scores? As we continue to discover more of his music, not least on this new recording, Kapustin shows how he developed his style subtly and steadily, always moving with the times. As the music that influenced him changed, so did his own. The development of Big Band Jazz can be traced in his work and, in that sense, Kapustin never settled on one style, except that he fused jazz and classical music so inseparably in the first place.