In welcoming the unrestrained brilliance of Frank Dupree in Kapustin’s Fourth Piano Concerto (A/21), I compared the experience to listening to ‘a carefully notated extended improvisation by the great Peter Nero and Oscar Peterson … with further input from Art Tatum, Count Basie and Bill Evans’. Here is more of the same but in chamber form. Dupree has made a careful selection of 23 short works for solo piano – works that might lend themselves to being played by a jazz trio – and brought in bass player Jakob Krupp and drummer Meinhard ‘Obi’ Jenne. Crucially, all three musicians are equally at home with classical music as they are with jazz.

The result is a heady 68 minutes of music giving the impression – if you were listening blind – of a well-drilled jazz trio improvising on some favourite numbers of their own. So it is something of a paradox to read in this CD’s booklet a quote from Kapustin himself: ‘I was never a jazz musician. I have never attempted to be a genuine jazz pianist, although I have to slip into this role for the benefit of my compositions. I am not interested in improvisation – and what would a jazz musician be without improvisation?’

Part of the problem is that few of Kapustin’s themes are hummable or particularly memorable (I am puzzled by the assertion, referred to in the booklet, that Kapustin is ‘often described as “a Russian in Gershwin’s clothing”’). In a stream of short pieces, such as presented here, everything ends up sounding much the same. The music may change (as it sometimes does from bar to bar, from bossa nova to swing, to stride piano and the blues), but the same or similar figurations, idiosyncrasies and rhythmic patterns are used repeatedly. And it is the addition of bass and drum kit (the latter placed slightly too forward in the balance and at the expense of the bass) that emphasise this. Listen to the Variations in the miraculous hands of Marc-André Hamelin (Hyperion, 8/04) or the selection of Preludes in Jazz Style from the no less gifted Steven Osborne (Hyperion, 8/00) and the character of Kapustin’s unique voice – ‘the notation of improvised music’ – shines more brightly and tellingly.

That is not by any means to dismiss the Dupree Trio’s versions of this music. They offer a compelling alternative view. And it would be churlish to deny the pleasure given by three guys whose technical and musical accomplishments are of a very high order.