Nobuyuki Tsujii - Beethoven- Piano Sonatas Nos. 8, 14 & 23 (2025) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Russian pianist Oleg Akkuratov (b. 1989), like the amazing Nobuyuki Tsujii, is a blind pianist of extraordinary skill and accomplishment. But unlike Tsujii, Akkuratov has scored his first successes in the realm of jazz. Even his educational background seemed initially to tilt toward jazz: he studied at the Moscow State Music College of Variety and Jazz Art with Mikhail Okun. He had further studies in jazz but then, on the Classical front, graduated from the Rostov State Conservatory where his teachers included Vladimir Daich. Despite his strong ties to jazz, he considers himself a classical pianist first, with jazz as a sort of sideline or hobby. By the way, he’s also a singer!

Listening to this disc, I would never suspect that Akkuratov had a jazz background. His fine sense for phrasing in general betrays no crossover compromises, no hint of a jazz style lurking beneath the surface. It appears that Akkuratov can, like André Previn before him, move chameleonically from jazz to classical. Everything fits a solid Classical mould here, from the pianist’s handling of rhythms and subtle use of rubato to his well judged tempos and wide-ranging dynamics. Listen to how he imparts a sense of mystery and drama to the beginning of the Pathetique Sonata: the opening chord strikes with ominous power and lingers momentarily, the ensuing notes completing the sense of foreboding, of uncertainty. Akkuratov plays the Allegro music with a feeling of urgency and thrust, and shapes the entire first movement to deliver a maximum yield of tension and mystery, with nothing overdone or understated. The second movement is lovely in its flowing cantabile lines, the bass notes often underpinning the melody with a fulsome warmth. The Rondo finale is, appropriately, busy and light, the pianist capturing every emotional tic in the music, thanks to his subtle and multi-graded dynamics and deftly applied though typically sparing rubato. Tempos throughout are in the moderate range, and that is pretty much the case in the other two sonatas as well.

TRACKLIST

1. Nobuyuki Tsujii - I. Grave – Allegro di molto e con brio
2. Nobuyuki Tsujii - II. Adagio cantabile
3. Nobuyuki Tsujii - III. Rondo. Allegro
4. Nobuyuki Tsujii - I. Adagio sostenuto
5. Nobuyuki Tsujii - II. Allegretto
6. Nobuyuki Tsujii - III. Presto agitato
7. Nobuyuki Tsujii - I. Allegro assai
8. Nobuyuki Tsujii - II. Andante con moto
9. Nobuyuki Tsujii - III. Allegro ma non troppo



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