Kotimaani - The Piano Wizard

Homeland - Piano skills
The Piano Wizard
Jukka Nykänen, piano
On the new album Kotimaani - The Piano Wizard, piano virtuoso Jukka Nykänen's skilful, humorous and sensitive arrangements of familiar Finnish folk songs can be heard. In addition to the romantic-virtuosic style, influences have been absorbed from baroque composers (Suomalainen rokus), Mozart (National Anthem), Frédéric Chopin (Leivo), Sergei Rachmaninov (The sky is blue and white) and Astor Piazzolla (Karelian municipalities). Nykänen is a very versatile musician who is characterized by open-mindedness, willingness to experiment and versatility.
With these arrangements, Jukka Nykänen continues the now rarer tradition of combining various art music traditions with well-known folk tunes, dances or - as in this case - Finnish provincial songs, perhaps banal tunes in the opinion of the harshest critics. But that's how it's always been done. Where do the baroque dance sets draw their inspiration from, including the keyboardist Johann Sebastian Bach himself, whose ghost we can't avoid even on this album? Or rhapsodies by Brahms, Liszt, Bartók, etc. and other compositions and arrangements, often just for the piano. Honor is also paid to Vivaldi. What about potpourri? These cavalcades have always been practiced, the best example here in Finland is probably Oskar Merikanto, whose productivity in the field was in a class of its own at the time.