CD Review (The Straits Times, July 2017)

KAPUSTIN Works for Cello

CHRISTINE RAUH, Cello et al

SWR Music 19002 / *****

The jazz-influenced music of Ukrainian composer Nikolai Kapustin (born 1937) is no longer a stranger in concert halls, especially his highly virtuosic piano works.  His small output of cello works has finally received their due in the very capable hands of young German cellist Christine Rauh. 

The two major works in this collection are his Second Cello Concerto (Op.103) and Second Cello Sonata (Op.84). The Concerto, premiered by Rauh in 2014, leans more to film music rather than strict jazz, with an achingly beautiful slow movement that sounds like a tribute to classic Hollywood romances. She is accompanied by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrucken Kaiserslautern conducted by Nicholas Collon.

The Sonata, as well as shorter pieces like Elegy (Op.96), Burlesque (Op.97) and Nearly Waltz (Op.98), are partnered by Benyamin Nuss on piano. These musings sound like jazz improvisations even if the parts were meticulously scored by the composer. The cello turns accompanist in Duett for alto sax and cello (Op.99) where an irrepressible saxophonist Peter Lehel holds court. 

Two of Kapustin's Piano Etudes (Op.40) have been transcribed for cello and vibraphone, with percussionist Ni Fan in support. As an encore, Rauh and Nuss' Hommage A Kapustin is a brief and touching tribute. Here are nearly 80 minutes of highly enjoyable listening.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, October 2015)

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC

AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM 2014

Danacord 749 / *****

The week-long annual piano festival held every August in the northern German town of Husum has to be the world's most unique. It highlights piano works of obscurity and those of unjustly neglected composers. The pianists who get invited are excellent artists although not household names. 

This disc of highlights and encores from the 2014 festival is intriguing as it is wide-ranging. Even the Beethoven performed is hardly well-known: his Fantasia Op.77, spoofed by Shostakovich in his First Piano Concerto, is performed with flair by young German Joseph Moog. Resourceful Japanese pianist Hiroaki Takenouchi chips in with the Nostalgia Waltz by Wim Muller and Prelude for Left Hand by Ernest Walker, both getting elegant readings.

Pierre Zimmerman's Variations on a Favourite Romance by Blangini could be better known if not for its cumbersome title, as is Elie Delaborde's Etude after a Petite Waltz of Dolmetsch, which fazes not the Italian firebrand Vincenzo Maltempo. Andrew Zolinski plays ragtime, but who could have suspected Stravinsky and modernist Stefan Wolpe as the composers? 

One gem not to be missed is Nikolai Medtner's Primavera, a lesser-known of his Forgotten Melodies Op.39, from British pianist Mark Viner. To close, Cuban virtuoso Jorge Luis Prats offers Villa-Lobos' delightful Broken Little Music Box, infectious toe-tapping music in Felix Guerrero's Suite Havanaise and dance miniatures by compatriot Ernesto Lecuona. Now does this what one's appetite for something completely different?

KAPUSTIN Piano Works

SUKYEON KIM, Piano

Piano Classics 0082 / ****1/2

The jazz-influenced pianist works of Ukrainian composer Nikolai Kapustin (born 1937) are beginning to appear with regularity in concert and recital programmes, not just because of their novelty value.  These are in fact some of the most sophisticated efforts in a genuine synthesis of classical forms and the jazz idiom. 

Like J.S.Bach, every piece of Kapustin's is carefully notated and there is no room for improvisation, even though much of it sounds improvised. This hour-long recital disc by young Korean pianist Sukyeon Kim distils some of his most popular pieces, and makes an excellent introduction to Kapustin's style.

His free-wheeling Variations Op.41, based on the opening bassoon theme from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, is an ideal starting point. For contrasts between slow and fast, the Andante Op.58 resembles an aria improvised, a musical striptease underway in a smoky nightclub while the Toccatina Op.36 is a tightly-woven encore-like showpiece. For sheer fireworks, a selection from the Etudes Op.40 rivals those straight-laced numbers by Chopin. 

The longest work in this programme is the four-movement Second Sonata Op.54, the best known of Kapustin's 20-something sonatas, while his transcription of the popular Aquarela Do Brasil (or simply Brasil) by Ary Baroso is simply delicious. Kim performs with a light and nimble touch, which adds to the sheer spontaneity of these exciting performances.      

NIKOLAI KAPUSTIN Piano Works / Thomas Ang (Piano) / Review

NIKOLAI KAPUSTIN Piano Works

THOMAS ANG, Piano

The Living Room @ The Arts House

Wednesday (31 July 2013)

The music of Nikolai Kapustin has really caught on in the concert halls of the world. In Singapore, Albert Lin and Nicholas Loh did the pioneering proselytising of the Ukrainian jazzman’s solo piano music (in the Singapore International Piano Festival), and now young Thomas Ang, a freshman at London’s Royal Academy of Music, is his chief trumpet-blower. And how he blows!

Last year, Thomas helmed an all-Kapustin chamber concert at The Arts House, and he has returned with a solo recital with no less than six World Premiere performances and three Singapore Premieres. Honestly I had thought pianists around the world would be knocking down Kapustin’s door fighting to play his new works, but I am glad that our very own Singaporean had won the rights to do these world premieres. He had personally written to the composer, and was rewarded with a bunch of new unpublished scores (some just fresh from the oven) which were presented this evening.

Kapustin’s pieces are often performed as encores to round up a recital of Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninov or whatever, often to show that the pianist was not a square but one who could truly swing. However an entire evening of Kapustin is a tall order for even seasoned audiences. It is paradoxically and emphatically not easy listening, instead one requiring a lot of concentration. A jazz club, with vodka martini in hand, might be a place to sample Kapustin, but 90 minutes of hard-core playing in a concert hall?

Thomas opened with the only piece on the programme I had heard previously, the diminutive Sonatina Op.100 (composed 2000). It is supposed to be one of Kapustin’s easiest pieces (ABRSM Grade Eight no less), but it still needs a loose, free-wheeling demeanour to pull it off. No sweat for the young man, and nine more far more treacherous scores to go!

Some of Kapustin's kontrapuntal forebears:
J.S.Bach, Shostakovich, Hindemith & Bartok.

The Seven Polyphonic Pieces for left hand Op.87 (1998) were tough listening, especially when the intention was the Godowskyan effect of making them sound as if being played by two hands. There were four fugues, two canons and one fughetta, and one is returned to the earlier sound world of Shostakovich, Hindemith and Bartok, with grand-daddy Bach being the original inspiration. All through the knotty counterpoint, Kapustin’s jazzy rhythmic touches were never lost in Thomas’s capable hand and even more complex mind. This was the first of the six World Premieres.

There were two Sonatas performed this evening, No.11 Op.101 (2000) and No.20 Op.144 (2011). The former, nicknamed Twickenham, had nothing to do with rugby but instead named after the neighbourhood where the president of The Kapustin Society resides. In three movements, it bears all the signatures of the Kapustin style: the insouciant blues, dissonances and consonances juggled, shaken and stirred within a decanter, an alarmingly increasing sense of disorientation (except that we know that both composer and pianist are fully in control) and the big gestures. By this time, many in the audience will know when they hear Kapustin next; his style is simply unmistakable.

Another fun aspect is to try and guess which composer’s styles he incorporates by the clues to be heard underneath the surface of florid jazz. In the two Etude-like Trinkets Op.122 (2004), which someone quoted by Thomas described as “cheesy”, I discern the harmonic subtleties and mystery of Scriabin. The tempo markings of Vivace and Con allegrezza may have been give-aways. 

In the Six Little Pieces Op.133 (2007), the Schoenbergian title was a red herring. These sound like shavings from a master craftsman’s work table, with Kapustin’s fingerprints all over the sound-bites. This music also suggests to me that the seemingly disparate worlds of jazz and atonalism occupy neighbouring bands within the broad spectrum of musical tonality.  

Scriabin, Schoenberg & Kapustin.
Are there common threads among them?

One thing is certain, Kapustin is far more loquacious than either Scriabin or Schoenberg. The latter two just say all that is enough. According to Thomas, the World Premiere of these pieces took place earlier at the Royal Academy this year. He wondered aloud if he could play them better. This kind of impertinence is almost forgivable for someone this young.

The next 5 pieces were World Premieres. Kapustin’s Op.139 and 140 were composed in 2009, and had the pop-like titles Holy Cow and Freeway. No explanations were offered by the composer. The first was meditative, contrasted by the rhythmic energy of the second. Then came Sonata No.20 Op.144 (2011), which is Kapustin’s latest (and hopefully not last) sonata. Like the Twickenham, it is in three movements, and when its 17 minutes were up, that sense of having heard it all before began to creep in. My one criticism is that there are not enough strong themes to sustain all the energy and angst required in learning such a work. 

Thomas did a fantastic job, simply because he never allowed the formula concocted by the composer to go flat. The fizz was always there because he made sure there was no opportunity for the playing to become blasé or banal. Honestly, if the sonatas from Nos.11 through 20 were played consecutively, I would be hard put to tell them apart. That however never happens with Scriabin, who wrote just 10 sonatas.

The final two works in the programme were there because the composer had asked Thomas to play them! Dialogue Op.148 (2013) was like a Chopinesque nocturne complete with a stirring and stormy middle section, while Etude Courte mais Transcendante Op.149 (2013) was Lisztian because of the technical wizardry required. There was a strong rhythmic left hand propelling the whole work through to its brilliant conclusion.

I do very much look forward to Thomas Ang’s next adventurous excursion into the fascinating world of rare piano repertoire. His virtuosity (now that’s a banal word for you), the simple ability to get across whatever his musical intention by whatever means, is something to behold. Could he become Singapore’s answer to Marc-André Hamelin?  

Singapore's Kapustinauts: Thomas Ang with Nicholas Loh (who gave the Singapore premiere of Kapustin's Second Sonata in 2009). Only Albert Lin is missing in action.

 

NIKOLAI KAPUSTIN Chamber Works / Thomas Ang and Friends / Review

NIKOLAI KAPUSTIN Chamber Works

Thomas Ang and Friends

The Chamber @ The Arts House

Sunday (29 July 2012) 

This review as published in The Straits Times on 31 July 2012 with the title "Friends explore new chamber repertoire".

Ukrainian composer Nikolai Kapustin (born 1937) is no longer a stranger in concert programmes these days, following ardent championing over the years by pianists like Nikolai Petrov, Marc-André Hamelin and Steven Osborne. Even in Singapore, Albert Lin and Nicholas Loh have performed his jazz-infused virtuosic piano pieces to much acclaim.

His chamber music, however, still represents terra incognito. So credit is due to young pianist Thomas Ang, recipient of the Hamish Dyer Musical Scholarship, for unearthing more than two hours of positive rarities for concert performance. All five works on the programme received Singapore premieres, and despite the highly approachable idiom, it was not always easy listening.

Kapustin’s music is more sophisticated and complex than that of Gershwin or Friedrich Gulda, just to name two pianist-composers who successfully “crossed-over” the classical and jazz divide. His themes are substantial, often subject to dense polyphony and counterpoint. The works are always rigorously schooled and scored note-for-note.  

This invigorating concert opened with a four-hand-arrangement of the 4-movement Sinfonietta (1986) performed by Ang and Stephanie Lew. Like Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, it was Haydn updated but in its piano guise, sounded like a Rachmaninov suite jazzed up in big band colours. The duo clearly enjoyed their whole-hearted dig despite the avalanche of notes.       

Less successful was the balance in the Violin Sonata (1992), where Ang’s violin part struggled to be heard above Lew’s busy figurations. The pizzicatos in the slow movement however piqued memories of the Blues movement from Ravel’s Violin Sonata, except that this entire work was the blues itself. The Flute Sonata (2004) had a far better airing, in part because Ang is more confident as a pianist, his crisp playing and acute sense of rhythm scoring plusses on the keyboard.

Flautist Daniel Bonaventure Lim, equally nimble and agile, projected very well throughout. Joined by cellist Chan Si Han, the Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano (1998) received the evening’s best performance. Like a genuine combo, the music leapt out from its black and white pages, headily emanating from the most hardcore and smoky of jazz nightclubs. The leisurely slow movement just launched itself attaca (without pause) into the most unbuttoned of finales.

The final work was the First String Quartet (1998), where Ang returned to lead on first violin. Deprived of the piano, the music was less frenetic but no less vibrant. Here the folksy sound of Slavic quartets met headlong with bluegrass and country traditions. The quartet overcame intonation issues and rhythmic hazards in the central movements before erupting in a frantic fugal finale.  

Despite every note being unfamiliar, the attendance and applause for this concert was more than encouraging. Ang, who commences musical studies in London this year, and his partners are urged to carry on exploring new repertoire.

All the performers (from L): Stephanie Lew (piano), Lum Jian Yang (viola), Margaret Teng (violin), Chan Si Han (cello), Thomas Ang (piano and violin) and Daniel Bonaventure Lim (flute).

EXHIBITION OF PICTURES / MIYUKI WASHIMIYA Piano Recital / Review

EXHIBITION OF PICTURES

MIYUKI WASHIMIYA, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (21 July 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 23 July 2012 with the title "Vivid brushstrokes on the piano".

The title of the concert said it all, forwarding the idea that pictures or visual images could be eloquently expressed by way of sound bites and aural impressions. There were 25 separate pieces in this solo recital by Japanese pianist Miyuki Washimiya, now a regular visitor to Singapore, invited to perform in a series of concerts by the Kris Foundation.

Yet there was a thematic cohesion in the manner these were presented, in groups of three before culminating in Mussorgsky’s eponymous masterpiece, Pictures at an Exhibition. The recital opened with three Debussy Preludes, displaying Washimiya’s crystalline bell-like clarity amid a slew of shimmering textures.

The Japanese have a way with the French aesthete that is uncanny, whether swirling to the tarantella rhythm of The Hills of Anacapri, summoning the waves beneath The Engulfed Cathedral or simulating the quirky jives of Afro-American Minstrels. In these her pedalling was exemplary, fully exploiting the reverberant acoustics of the recital studio without ever sounding harsh.

In the three popular Liszt pieces, full-blooded Romantic emotions were held in check, so the ardour of Liebesträume No.3 and Consolation No.3 did not overflow as some might have liked. A few dropped notes resulted in La Campanella in being a little cautious, but the tintinnabulation of her trills was genuinely exciting as she rallied to a thunderous close.

The best performances came in the two Preludes and Etude by Ukrainian jazzman Nikolai Kapustin. Washimiya’s infectious sense of rhythm, incisive and unerring, coupled with note perfection at dizzying speeds swept the board. Where did she learn to play the jazzy blues like that?

The Mussorgsky Pictures were treated to an honest-to-goodness account rather than an out-and-out grandstanding one. Scrupulous to detail and the score, there was no need to shock and awe as each of Viktor Hartmann’s portraits steadily came to life. There was a troubadour’s lovesick yearning in The Old Castle, delicate traipsing in the Ballet of Unhatched Chicks, stark irony in the Two Russian Jews, all vividly characterised. Even the fiendish repeated notes of Limoges Marketplace held no terrors for her assured fingers. 

When the clangourous bells of The Great Gate of Kiev had finally silenced, encores were demanded. Washimiya offered two further gems: Kapustin’s Eleventh Prelude and Debussy’s most famous prelude, Girl with the Flaxen Hair. If one did not already get the drift, her message writ large was “small is beautiful”.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, May 2012)

RACHMANINOV Cello & Piano Works

QIN LI-WEI, Cello

ALBERT TIU, Piano

Decca 8898195 / *****

After great success in the Beethoven Cello Sonatas, the most celebrated cello and piano duo resident in Singapore has returned to the recording studio for Rachmaninov’s complete cello music. The major work is the 40-minute long Cello Sonata in G minor (Op.19), composed at the same time as his celebrated Second Piano Concerto. Imbued with similar gloriously lyrical lines, cellist Qin Li-Wei finds the full gamut of emotional responses in its four movements. His is the true voice of yearning and nostalgia, brilliantly supported in the busy piano part by Albert Tiu. Rachmaninov’s playing used to drown his cellist partner in performances, but the balance here is just right. The two early Op.2 pieces – Prelude and Oriental Dance – are delightful miniatures.

The original music is padded up to a generous 70 minutes with transcriptions of Rachmaninov’s Russian songs, or Romances. The most popular is the Vocalise (Op.34 No.14), a melancholic lament so typical of the Slavic spirit. Quite contrasting in character are the rapturous Spring Waters (Op.14 No.11) and the reflective To The Children (Op.26 No.7), the latter dedicated to the duo’s four children. New to the repertoire is Tiu’s arrangement of the nocturne-like piano Prelude (Op.23 No.4), which sounds like the perfect encore. This album is a worthy successor on Decca to the beloved 1980s recording by Lynn Harrell and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

KAPUSTIN Concert Etudes

Preludes in Jazz Style

CATHERINE GORDELAZE, Piano

Naxos 8.572272 / ****

The music of Ukrainian pianist and jazz-band arranger Nikolai Kapustin (born 1937) has found great favour with pianists who play “serious” repertoire today. Not since Gershwin has a composer so effectively and successfully bridged the chasm between nightclub and concert hall genres. Kapustin studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Alexander Goldenweiser (who taught Lazar Berman, Tatiana Nikolayeva and Dmitri Bashkirov among others), thus rigorously schooled in classical forms and syntax. This set contains some of his best music outside of his sonatas.

The Eight Concert Etudes Op.40 headily unites the lyricism of Chopin, spellbinding virtuosity of Liszt, ecstatic efflorescence of Scriabin and freewheeling nonchalance of Oscar Peterson, the latter frequently quoted as Kapustin’s biggest influence. The shorter 24 Preludes In Jazz Style Op.53 follow the same major-minor key sequence as the great sets by Bach, Chopin and Shostakovich, beginning with C major and closing in D minor. Every piece is strictly notated in score and nothing is improvised even if the playing suggests otherwise. Georgian pianist Catherine Gordeladze possesses not the feverish or frenetic pacing of Marc-André Hamelin or Steven Osborne (the acknowledged Kapustin masters on disc) but her accounts still allow many details to be savoured. This is technically very difficult music to perform, but totally easy on the ears.        

ALBERT LIN Piano Recital / Review

ALBERT LIN Piano Recital
Esplanade Recital Studio
Tuesday (4 May 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 May 2010.

Among the small field of Singaporean pianists over the years, there is always one among them who stands out as a maverick, one who bucks the trends and relishes in offbeat repertoire. In the past, it was Ong Lip Tat, Victor Khor and the ever-young Margaret Leng Tan who raised collective eyebrows. These days, that mantle has fallen upon the small shoulders of Albert Lin.

His solo recital was ambrosia for those wearied by Chopin and more Chopin. It was not pure Bach that opened the programme, but Bach-Godowsky. The hallowed Polish icon’s amplification of Bach’s Violin Sonata No.1 In G minor had a quality of being infused by steroids and acid. Its grandiloquent vistas resounded in the studio’s reverberant acoustic like an organ, and Lin lapped up every turn of the four movements with trenchancy and fervour.

Next were Singapore premieres of four selections from Canadian super-virtuoso Marc-André Hamelin’s suite Con Intimissimo Sentimento. Three Ländler (Austrian dances in three-quarter time) and a Berceuse exhibited a more intimate side of both pianists (composer and performer), revelling in more piquant, naughty harmonies and subtle rhythmic insight.

Very different was Singapore-based American Dirk Stromberg’s 9/11…In Protest Of…, an angry and reflective essay that represented an arsenal of 20th century devices, including Ivesian tone clusters and Cowellian harmonic sheens. The work closed as it began, with the sustaining pedal holding every note until they died out naturally.

Letting down his hair with a jazz selection, Lin eased out the blues and boogie woogie of four Nikolai Kapustin Preludes, followed by three Gershwin songs transcribed by the late-lamented Earl Wild, who died earlier this year. The free-wheeling perpetual motion spun in the latter’s Fascinatin’ Rhythm was simple infectious.

The intrepid keyboard adventure closed with Alexander Scriabin’s Fourth Sonata, ironically the most familiar work on the programme. The Andante was seductive, its melting lyricism soon taking wing in the volatile finale. Defying gravity was the illusion in this Prestissimo, and Lin rose Icarus-like, to a whisker of crashing and burning out in its final ecstatic pages. Taking risks is part of “live” performance, you either have it in you or not at all. Albert Lin is the Khoo Swee Chiow of the piano.

This recital was presented by the Young Musicians Society (YMS) as part of its AfterEight series of recitals.

Living with... ALBERT LIN / Piano Recital / Review

Living with... ALBERT LIN Piano Recital
The Living Room, The Arts House
Monday (17 August 2009)

For decades, composers have been trying to unify the disparate genres and sounds of classical music and jazz in a coherent and intelligent manner. The results are variable, but one of the most convincing is the Ukrainian pianist and jazz bandleader Nikolai Kapustin (born 1937), whose treacherously tricky piano works are gradually being discovered by mainstream classical artists.

One half of pianist Albert Lin’s hour-long classical jazz recital was devoted to Kapustin (left), beginning with his “simple” Sonatina (Op.100), an ideal primer in this crossover idiom. The sonata form is replicated in miniature, complete with exposition repeat, development and recapitulation. Four Préludes (from Op.53) followed, each reliving different popular styles; stride, boogie woogie, the blues and an updated sarabande (a slow Baroque dance).

The major work was Variations (Op.41). Based on the opening bassoon solo from Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite Of Spring, the theme so cleverly disguised as to elude even the most acute of theme-spotters. These are full written-out scores, where nothing is improvised, but Lin’s easy, spontaneous and totally natural takes seemed to suggest otherwise.

The Catalan composer Federico Mompou’s Cancion y Danza No.7 (Song and Dance) was not at all jazzy, but its disarming harmonies piqued the ears. While American William Bolcom’s popular Graceful Ghost Rag represented a sophisticated advancement on Scott Joplin’s rag standards, Earl Wild’s paraphrasing of Gershwin brought the art of transcription to new highs.

His oh-so-naughty dissonances, trademark filigree and free-wheeling virtuosity in songs like Somebody Loves Me, Embraceable You and Fascinatin’ Rhythm were a complete joy, and equaled by Lin’s rapier reflexes and lightning touches.

The encores were pure tongue-in-cheek. Whoever thought that Harold Arlen’s Over The Rainbow could be cooked with slivers of Rachmaninov sonatas and concertos? Apparently Jonathan Mann’s uproarious conflation thought so, and Marc-André Hamelin’s (left) Ringtone Waltz – formerly known as Irritation Waltz after Nokia (yes, that ringtone) – brought out the giggles. Lin’s next recital will be keenly awaited.