2x hören: Keine Angst vor Nikolai Kapustin

The Ukrainian composer Nikolai Kapustin is regarded as a crossover artist between classical music and jazz. Pianist Frank Dupree rearranges selected piano pieces for bass and drums with his jazz trio. And in conversation with music mediator Rafael Rennicke, they explore the question of where the boundaries between the two genres merge.

"I was immediately hooked on his music," recalls pianist Frank Dupree of his youth in the 2000s. At that time, the compositions of Ukrainian composer Nikolai Kapustin were virtually unknown in Western Europe.

Today, 32-year-old Dupree is one of the best interpreters and most creative mediators of Kapustin's music and fills concert halls with his jazz trio: "We think that Kapustin's compositions definitely belong in every concert hall in the world. Wherever we put Kapustin on the program, the audience almost dances on their chairs!"

Nikolai Kapustin was a crossover artist between jazz and classical music. Born in eastern Ukraine in 1937 and died in Moscow in 2020, he was already active as a jazz pianist, arranger and composer during his piano studies at the Moscow Conservatory and had his own quintet.

His extensive oeuvre includes 20 piano sonatas and six piano concertos. Most of them are inspired by different jazz styles, but always cast in classical forms and meticulously notated - a virtuoso challenge for every performer.

With his jazz trio, Frank Dupree has arranged selected piano pieces by Kapustin. Together with music mediator Rafael Rennicke, he and double bassist Jakob Krupp and drummer Meinhard "Obi" Jenne explore the question of how Kapustin combined composition and improvisation so ingeniously and where the boundaries between jazz and classical music begin to blur.