Kapustin Piano Concerto No. 5; Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion*; Sinfonietta Frank Dupree, Adrian Brendle (piano), Meinhard Jenne, Franz Bach (percussion); Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra/Dominik Beykirch Capriccio C5495 58:44 mins
‘I wish I could rewrite my past and make it perfect like the music I compose.’ Kapustin’s plaintive comment rather suggests that his brilliant yet anything-but-improvised jazz compositions represented for him a retreat into an idealised alternative world. His Fifth Piano Concerto, though written in 1993, sounds as if Gershwin might have written it in the 1930s as a sequel to his own Concerto.
This is not the first recording, though the only other version – performed by Masahiro Kawakami (on Exton) – is hard to purchase outside Japan. In any case, this new recording displaces that version, played as it is with more idiomatic zest both by the soloist Frank Dupree and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dominik Beykirch. Kapustin, himself an orchestral pianist, made full use of his insider’s knowledge, adroitly mixing big band jazz style with virtuosic orchestration worthy of Ravel or Strauss.
The lively Concerto for two pianos and percussion of 2002 at first hearing sounds undemanding, though darker emotional undercurrents are suggested by its harmonic drift and the way each movement abruptly ends. The Sinfonietta, yet to be recorded as far as I know in its original orchestral guise, appears more often in the piano duo arrangement heard here. The ‘Overture’, here sounding rather hard-edged in its rhythmic excitement, could have been played with a little more charm, but there’s welcome relief in the more mellow ‘Slow Waltz’ and ‘Intermezzo’ that follow before the effervescent ‘Rondo’ finale.
Daniel Jaffé
