MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


Support us financially by purchasing this from

Nikolai KAPUSTIN (b.1937)
Complete Chamber Works for Flute
Flute Sonata, Op. 125 (2004) [19:56]
Divertissement, Op. 91 (1998) [17:09]
A Little Duo for flute and cello, Op. 156 (2014) [6:23]
Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano, Op. 86 (1998) [19:58]
Immanuel Davis (flute)
Adam Kuenzel (flute)
Käthe Jarka, Pitnarry Shin (cello)
Timothy Lovelace (piano)
rec. 2016, Ted Mann Hall, University of Minnesota, USA
NAXOS 8.579024 [63:00]

Perhaps you know of the music of Ukraine-born Nikolai Kapustin already. There have been a few CDs over the years to etch his niche even more deeply. Try Leslie De'Ath's article on this site as an arm's-length, in-depth appraisal by a performer who has also done so much for Cyril Scott's piano music. Kapustin has thrived under recorded attention from Steven Osborne (Hyperion), Daniel del Pino (2+2), Miguel Borrego (NPM), Sun Hee Yoo and Sukyeon Kim (Piano Classics).

These four works come from the period 1998 - 2014. They're in Kapustin's hay-wagon ride of a journey that branches out into a cool promontory. It's a projection from a mainland occupied, as it were, by the likes of Jacques Loussier, Friedrich Gulda, Meyer Kupferman and Conlon Nancarrow. Slightly gallic, Kapustin's music swoons and accelerates the listener with a sense of propulsion only just under control. They combine a predominance of jazz blended with an element of laid-back sultriness. The track of these entertaining four 'missiles' tips, turns and mercurially breezes left and right, up and down. It's as if Debussy's Faune had come under the influence of the high priests of jazz and had given himself over to the wild excesses of Pan and Dionysus - putting the maenads and corybantes to flight.

Six years separate the four-movement Flute Sonata from the three movements of the Divertissement but the style gap is hardly detectable, except that the tempo and mood is calmer in the Divertissement. A Little Duo is the most recent work here and fines the complement down to two. Here, Kapustin takes the quintessence of his style established in the 1990s and provides what amounts to a concentrated Baedeker of his creativity. More of the same? Probably … but the huskier presence of the cello has greater prominence. The Trio at times, as in the first of three movements, boasts a challenging density of texture moderated by the calming nectar of the middle Andante. The playing seems fluent and idiomatic and the recording is apt to this rightness and seeming ease of expression.

Kapustin is a fascinating and engaging character. When will a company get around to recordings his six numbered piano concertos (1961, 1974, 1985, 1989, 1993 (2x)) and his host of other pieces for piano and orchestra?

Rob Barnett
 



Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing