Gramophone

Long among the Soviet Union’s best-kept musical secrets, Ukrainian-born Nikolai Kapustin belatedly found appreciation for a distinctly classical take on jazz pianism such as eschews improvisation for rhythmic precision and emotional stability. Numerous ‘classical’ pianists have been taking up this music that, for Ophelia Gordon, is most certainly a labour of love.

As succinct as they are evocative, the Preludes are an ideal way into Kapustin’s sound-world and Gordon conveys accordingly the taciturn aura of the Fifth, uproarious boogie of the 17th, knowing playfulness of the 18th and genial syncopation of the 23rd from this selection. The Concert Études find Kapustin’s idiom at its most concentrated and if Gordon has the measure of specific pieces – oblique mood swings of ‘Reverie’, cascading textures of ‘Reminiscence’, tail-chasing élan of ‘Raillery’ or unforced suavity of ‘Intermezzo’ – others such as Catherine Gordeladze and Marc-André Hamelin audibly draw them into a more finely balanced whole.

It is in the other pieces that Gordon’s prowess comes into fullest focus – whether the sassiness of Big Band Sounds, an encapsulation with few peers, or the unfailing poise of Contemplation with its luxuriant if never cloying harmony. The knowing playfulness of Aquarela do Brasil is ideally judged and the ‘Manteca’ Paraphrase – a rare foray into the two-piano medium but here played double-tracked – exudes a panache of which Dizzy Gillespie would surely have approved. Gordon’s full-on approach can verge on the unyielding, yet her belief in this music is its own justification and makes this recital well worth investigating.

—Richard Whitehouse