Nikolai Kapustin was born in the Ukraine in 1937. He took up the piano at the age of seven and later studied at the Moscow Conservatoire with no less a luminary than Alexander Goldenweiser. This firmly placed Kapustin in the strongest of Russian traditions, Goldenweiser having himself studied with Ziloti, Pabst, Arensky, Ippolitov-Ivanov and Taneyev and having been the teacher of (among others) Feinberg, Ginzburg, Nikolayeva and Kabalevsky. Had Kapustin come away with any lasting impressions? 'Well it was very exciting to have contact with him. He was an old man by that time [aged 81] and of course he'd been a friend of Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and Medtner - he even knew Tchaikovsky - and he had many interesting stories about them. But as for piano teaching per se, he didn't give so much.'
Certainly Kapustin's musical education could not have been more traditional, and when he graduated from the Moscow Conservatoire it was with a programme of music including the Liszt B minor Sonata and Beethoven's Op. 54 Sonata. He'd started composing well before he entered the Conservatoire, making his first attempt at a piano sonata when he was just 13. But unlike the music of his maturity this was a purely classical piece; he had yet to encounter jazz, which was something he discovered in his mid-teens after he had arrived in Moscow.
'In 1957 there was an international festival of youth. lt wasn't just about music, but many things, and people came from all over the world. Unfortunately it was a big Communistic mess! I played my Op. 1 Concertino for piano and orchestra - it was the first time I'd played one of my own pieces in public.' With characteristic modesty he adds, 'It was nothing very serious - it's a very jazzy piece.' In fact, all the while that Kapustin was immersing himself in the classical masters in the conservatoire he was leading a double life as a jazz pianist, not only with his own quintet but also as a member of Yuri Saulsky's Central Artist's Club Big Band. And after graduating in 1961 jazz became an even more dominant part of his life as he spent 11 years touring both home and abroad with Leg Lundströms Jazz Orchestra, an experience that had a profound and lasting influence on his own writing. 'The interesting thing for me was always this fusion between classical and jazz, classical forms and a jazzy idiom.' Does he see this as a way forward in music, with everything eventually merging into one? 'For me the classical part is more important. The jazz style is there to give colour - I don't like jazz 'forms' - if you can describe them as that - which is why I've adopted those from classical music.'
However, this musical melding can also lead to confusion. In a climate where we're so fond of labelling and pigeon-holing musical genres those who anticipate something inherently serious from the word 'sonata' are put off by the ebullience of Kapustin's style, while those expecting cutting-edge jazz are disappointed by its formal structure (he claims never to improvise while performing) and its use of traditional gestures. This penchant can be seen not only in the piano sonatas (ten to date) but also in the other forms he favours, with titles such as 'concerto', 'prelude', 'etude', 'nocturne', 'impromptu' and so on. Interestingly, his 24 Preludes in Jazz Style, Op. 53, follow not only Chopin's pattern of key signatures, but also his brevity. 'I wrote them so I could get them all onto a single disc. They're very short as a result, though on the recording itself [a Melodiya LP, now available on a Boheme label CD] the spaces between the pieces are a bit too short. 'So they're designed to be played as a cycle? 'Actually no. I think they're too long that way - pianists can play any part of it. It doesn't matter.' Another obvious parallel with the past can be found in his set of 24 Preludes and Fugues, which Kapustin has recently recorded. I asked him whether Bach or Shostakovich had had any bearing on his thinking. 'Bach, yes. Shostakovich no.' More aphoristic answers.
In common with Stravinsky, Kapustin is an ardent advocate of composing at the piano. 'All piano music has to be composed at the keyboard otherwise you can write very strange things. If I didn't play I wouldn't be able to compose - when you're a performer you know how to make things easier for the player.' And with Kapustin's music, especially when he's in breathless virtuoso mode, the performer must be grateful for every break he can get. Interestingly, if you listen to the composer's own performances you come away thinking that he's more comfortable writing fast movements than slow ones; while those such as the outer ones of Sonata No. 2, or the finales of Nos. 1 and 6 are thrilling and apparently effortless, the more sedate writing, whether in the sonatas or works such as the Jazz Preludes and the Ten Bagatelles, can seem less, well, substantial. Yet listening to Steven Osborne's new Hyperion recording perhaps the reverse is true. Suddenly the slower pieces gain a poetic and inward substance while the faster ones can sometimes fail to convince. Plenty of names come fleetingly to mind when assessing the influences on Kapustin's compositional style, but the results are entirely individual. On the jazz side it seems obvious to mention Art Tatum, but ask Kapustin about figures past or current whom he admires and the answer is unequivocal: Oscar Peterson. 'He's No. 1 for me.'
Kapustin is now in his sixties and it does seem as though his international star is finally in the ascendant. His admirers make up in ardency what they may lack in number. Nikolai Petrov has long been a champion of his music, and now Steven Osborne (who located the scores of Kapustin's music via Petrov - the collapse of the Soviet Union effectively brought to an end the publication of Russian music and none of Kapustin's more recent music has yet made it out of manuscript) and Marc-André Hamelin are taking up the torch. Kapustin's Soviet era Melodiya recordings are also being reissued on the Boheme label. He generally composes for himself rather than to commission, though, he says, if a friend asks for something he's happy to write it. He seems to expect little, and when asked about his future ambitions his reply was typically modest: to write a second string quartet and another quartet for four saxophones. And, without a doubt, more piano music.
Harriet Smith
Piano, International Piano Quarterly, Autumn 2000