Xander Benham embarks on a long-term project: the complete piano sonatas of Kapustin. He takes up that challenge with the determination of someone who knows exactly why.
Nikolai Kapustin is one of those composers about whom everyone who knows him becomes enthusiastic, yet who remains grossly underestimated by the general public. The Ukrainian-Russian pianist and composer (1937–2020) grew up in the Soviet Union, studied at the Moscow Conservatory, and harbored in secret a passionate love for jazz – a genre that was politically suspect in his homeland. His answer to that paradox was as ingenious as it was uncompromising: he wrote jazz out in full. No improvisation, no lead sheets, but fully notated music that sounds as if it emerges on the spot. Classical architecture, with a soul of jazz.
The result is a peculiar body of work that resists easy classification – too jazzy for the classical hall, too strictly notated for the jazz club – and perhaps for that very reason remained in the shadows for so long. Whoever discovers Kapustin once becomes addicted to him. And that brings us to Xander Benham.
The English pianist, now based in Utrecht, discovered Kapustin during his bachelor's at City, University of London, and has not let go since. He delved into the Concert Etudes and gave a rare performance of Kapustin's Second Piano Concerto in the Netherlands as the finale of his master's at HKU Utrecht Conservatorium – a work that was barely known here until then. Since then, he regularly performs Kapustin in concerts. Now he takes a step no pianist has taken before: he will record the complete cycle of twenty piano sonatas, one by one.
The first recording will be available from June 1, 2026, on all streaming platforms: Piano Sonata No. 1, opus 39, better known as the Sonata-Fantasia, written in 1984. The work is in four movements – Vivace, Largo, Scherzo, and Allegro molto – and lasts approximately twenty-one minutes. It is technically demanding, full of rhythmic complexity, virtuosic turns, and that typical Kapustin tension between notated precision and apparent spontaneity. Benham studied it from May 2023 and only recorded it in October 2025 at Trypoul Studios in the Dutch Neerkant. More than two years for one sonata – that is not a scheduling problem, but seriousness.
What characterizes this project is the conviction behind it. Benham does not see Kapustin as a curiosity or as a hybrid between genres, but as a composer of stature who deserves a rightful place in the repertoire. That position is defensible, and it is good that someone backs it up with deeds.
Kapustin worked his entire life in relative obscurity – his scores circulated barely for years, his name was absent from major reference works. Fortunately, interest has been growing in recent years, but a systematic documentation of the sonata cycle remains lacking. That Benham wants to fill that gap is in itself significant.
Classical music needs more pianists with a mission, not just a program. Benham seems to know what he wants to say, and he has twenty sonatas in which to prove it. That may well be the strongest kind of promise.
More info: https://linktr.ee/xander.benham