It’s heartening to see Nikolai Kapustin’s unique brand of “written out jazz” finding its way into the hands of more and more pianists. Yet to merely play the notes is not enough. Everything should sound effortless and idiomatic, as though the music was improvised yet thoroughly practiced. In this sense, Catherine Gordeladze’s workaday pianism falls short. While her fingers grasp the eight Op. 40 Concert Etudes’ formidable challenges, her solid performances yield to Marc-André Hamelin’s faster, far suppler traversals.
Compare, for instance, Gordeladze’s relatively heavy way with No. 2’s lyrical double notes next to Hamelin’s brisker, lighter, and more long-lined treatment. Or, sample her deliberate, squarely phrased No. 6 against Hamelin’s bouncy pace and witty accents.
In the faster of the 24 Preludes in Jazz Style, Gordeladze’s relatively unadventurous textural differentiation between tunes and accompaniments yields to the composer’s superior fluency and sense of shape, to say nothing of his more natural jazz phrasing; compare, for example, Kapustin’s loping “Erroll Garner style” off-beats in No. 4 next to Gordeladze’s more uniform, less characterful touch. She proves strongest in slower, lyrical preludes, where her singing tone and instinct for color are heard to best advantage. On the whole, however, our references remain unsurpassed.
