Yeol Eom Son

There are many great contemporary composers of our time but few write music that we can relate to so easily and closely as Nikolai Kapustin. His exquisite use of techniques and musical languages of classical and jazz ensures that his music appeals to a wide range of listeners. To those who love classical music but know little about jazz it does not sound too unfamiliar and vice versa. Indeed, it gives great pleasure to even the most untrained ears of either genre of music.

The Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son has attracted admirers in venues of multiple types: in the buttoned-down world of the classical music competition, and in the broad popular arena of YouTube, where a video of Son performing the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467, has attracted some ten million views. Son chooses that concerto for her Mozart debut, and here she has the added advantage of backing by Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields.