Yeol Eum Son (b1986) is a South Korean pianist who first came to public attention when she won the Silver Medal at the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition and awards for both the best chamber performance and best performance of the commissioned work. For the second round, she included Kapustin’s Variations, Op 41, probably the first person to have played any of the Russian’s music at this competition.

You have to be a certain kind of pianist to play this remarkable music and Yeol Eum Son is one of them. First, you need a phenomenal finger technique, then lightning reflexes, rock-solid rhythmic control and, I imagine, supernatural sight-reading skills. This is not music for the amateur with a few idle moments to spare at the weekend. Try the dizzying Eight Concert Études from 1984, where Oscar Peterson meets Poulenc meets Earl Wild meets Gershwin and Ravel. Kapustin’s assimilation of these influences into a convincing and unique voice makes for an exhilarating, foot-tapping listen.

The Variations (also from 1984) are no less reliant on jazz and torrents of rapid semiquavers that demand the cleanest and clearest of articulation and phrasing (which they duly receive). Moon Rainbow (6'50"), said to be Kapustin’s last opus (161), is the least virtuoso work here but the brief Sonatina (from 2000) and, especially, the Sonata No 2 (from 1989) fizz with life-affirming vitality, the latter’s first movement taking in Erroll Garner and boogie-woogie, the perpetuum mobile finale Art Tatum’s pounding left-hand stride piano with a brain-frying time signature of C 7/8 C 5/8. Yeol Eum Son negotiates everything thrown at her with athletic finesse.

And I would have ended my review there, warmly recommending this recording – which I do – had I not already got on my shelf Marc-André Hamelin playing the Eight Concert Études and Variations, and Steven Osborne playing the Sonata No 2. Both are also Kapustin-dedicated releases (on Hyperion) which, in the last resort, have the edge on the remarkable Yeol Eum Son because of the nonchalant derring-do and lightness of touch they bring to their task. This notwithstanding, Nikolai Kapustin died in July last year and Yeol Eum Son dedicates the recording to him ‘as a heartfelt farewell and deepest thanks for all the great music he left us’. It is a worthy tribute.