Nikolai Kapustin wrote music that looks like jazz with a Bach soul: every wild syncopation fully notated, nothing improvised, all of it drilled into classical counterpoint. The Toccatina — third of his Eight Concert Études, Op. 40 (1984) — is barely two minutes of relentless perpetuum mobile.
Hamelin smuggled Kapustin into the concert hall, plays it with an unnerving evenness. He made something this busy sound this easy. The rare encore that’s both a party trick and genuinely good music:
Hamelin’s recording is here.