Nikolai Kapustin Piano Music
Nikolai Kapustin is a Russian composer and jazz pianist, born in 1937. His credentials are impeccable, including studies with the great pianist Alexander Goldenweiser. Judging from this music, he would have an easy time getting a job at any cocktail lounge in America. Kapustin's jazz style is not what we usually hear in jazz-classical hybrid music, but a thoroughly contemporary "easy-listening" type of jazz that's hard to focus on, even when it's poured into classical forms like the Sonatas. The last movement of the Sonata No. 2, which concludes the disc, is a rousing allegro with good ideas and exciting virtuosity. But despite Osborne's fine playing and the excellent recorded sound, by the time that finale comes around, the listener may well have drifted off into cocktail reveries.--Leslie Gerber