Meet Frank Dupree
Not many fans of orchestral music, in the UK at least, have ever heard of Nikolai Kapustin. How did you first come across his music?
My high-school music teacher introduced me to the music of pianist and composer Nikolai Kapustin. I think I was 15 years old when my teacher sent me the link to a YouTube video of Kapustin playing one of his own piano pieces. I was immediately infected by that sound and I used all my pocket money to buy all the Kapustin sheet music that I could find. There was some audio of his orchestral music online, but no sheet music at all. That changed thanks to Schott Music. Did you know, that Kapustin composed six piano concertos? That’s more than what Beethoven or Rachmaninov composed! I am pleased to share the Piano Concerto No. 5 with the British audience, as the premiere of any orchestral Kapustin works.
What is it about this music that makes you such an enthusiastic Kapustin fan?
Since I was a teenager, I have loved the music of Gershwin, Bernstein, Milhaud, Stravinsky: everything that combines classical music with jazz. In the 1920s, Gershwin started to experiment by mixing the two genres. More than four or five decades later, Kapustin could draw from a longer history of jazz music, and included modern styles like blues, swing, bebop, fusion and Latin music in his works. It’s just unbelievable, how a composer from the Soviet Union was able to create such various masterworks, and that he would be the best friend of Oscar Peterson.
Although it sounds very jazzy and improvised, his Piano Concerto No. 5 is written down note-for-note. Do you ever improvise when you’re performing it?
All of Kapustin’s compositions are completely written down and, as he was a great virtuoso on the piano himself, he knew exactly what was possible. The music should still sound improvised, spontaneous, or with a kind of swing or groove. That’s the challenge. With my own jazz trio (Obi Jenne on drums and Jakob Krupp on double bass), we perform his piano solo works like the Etudes Op. 40 or the Preludes Op. 53 in a trio formation. Sometimes, we improvise between the pieces or make transitions from one work to another which is a lot of fun!
Kapustin lived until 2020 – did you ever meet him?
Unfortunately, no! I started doing some research in 2020, before we recorded the first disc with the 4th Piano Concerto. Thanks to some friends and piano professors, I came closer to his contacts step by step. By the time Schott Music had announced his death, it was too late.
I have, however, has some nice conversations with his son Anton in the meantime, who lives in California and works on the string theory at the Caltech University. I am sure, we’ll get to meet each other one day.
What are you looking forward to about coming to London to perform with the Philharmonia?
First of all, I am super excited to see how the audience in London will react to Kapustin’s music – and to see how one of the greatest orchestras like the Philharmonia will perform the Concerto with me. I know that Santtu-Matias Rouvali is not only a fantastic conductor, but is also a great drummer. The drum-kit was my first instrument, before I started playing the piano. I hope that we will get the groove all together on stage, and that we can gain a lot of new fans for Kapustin’s music.
What concert coming up in our London season would you most like to listen to, and why?
Oh, that’s a really difficult question! I am torn between Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto with Bruce Liu, or Brahms’ Second Concerto with Daniil Trifonov. Both pianists are geniuses and I am sure that they will both have something very personal to say in these two piano concertos. Can I just go to both of them?
Frank Dupree joins us to play the UK premiere of Kapustins’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in London on Thursday 7 March.
