They are both flawed players, in my opinion. Being a keyboard/piano player myself, I think I`m competent enough to comment on issues like technique, patches and composition. Whether you agree with me or not is not something I care about, so please, no flames.
Vitalij Kuprij is an interesting case. According to a friend of a friend who went to the same music academy as him, Vitalij entered the academy at a very young age, like Shostakovich, Alkan and many other greats. You don`t do that without a shitload of talent, and Vitalij is extremely talented, there`s no doubt about that. Whoever teached him did a very good job at it. Vitalij became extremely good at the piano. His expressive touch, his flawless technique and ridiculous speed gave him well deserved fame. Then he started playing neo-classical metal, for which his dexterous fingers were well-suited.
The first solo-album is very, very good neo-classical metal. Apparently Kuprij spent a lot of time writing and arranging the songs, and Greg Howe did a great job at producing and playing guitar on it. Some of the keyboard work heard on that album gets my vote as some of the most difficult ever played on a metal record(e.g. the harpsichord solo in Opus 1). I hear some of you say that Pinnella is as fast as Kuprij. This is bullshit. Kuprij has a million times better technique than Pinnella and can play more challenging patterns at a faster speed. This fact can not be disputed. Hell, I`d like to see Pinnella playing "I just don`t care". But back to Kuprijs career: From High Definition, however, Kuprij started going downhill.
The Artension albums are for the most part lackluster power metal with ridiculously fast and progressively sloppier keyboard solos. On the first album, they(the solos)are clean as country air, on Forces of Nature(the third album)they are getting very rough(take the 3rd solo in Forces of Nature[the song]as an example
)and I won`t even comment on the abomination that is the last Artension album and VK3. It`s sad to hear, but apparently Kuprij has stopped practicing and leaned back on his talent, which is not sufficient for me. It`s sad to see that once he got a name, he had nothing more to strive and practice for.
Kuprijs patches are for the most part presets and consist of the basic categories "lead 1 & 2, strings, hammond organ, church organ, choir", et.c. He has not much will to experiment or come up with some interesting and fresh ideas when it comes to sound, but they(the patches)do the job and don`t sound awful. Still, I wonder what came into his mind when he used the "Thunderstorm" patch as the intro for an Artension album
Kuprijs compositions range from excellent to horrendous, and become progressively worse from record to record. Bottom line: Kuprijs first works are excellent, but after that he became lazy and stopped practicing and caring about what he put out on record(The Malmsteen syndrome).
Michael Pinnella gets my vote for the worst patches of the 90`s. I hate his playing on all the SX albums up until Twilight in Olympus, mostly because his patches were so horrendously bad, but also because his parts were often horribly written. For those who are keyboard illiterate, I will try to explain a bit as I comment on the albums.
The S/T is clearly the worst of all the albums in terms of keyboard playing. Abominations like the Harpsichord solo in Thorns of Sorrow
yuk
, the excruciatingly bad solo in the long song I can`t remember the name of right now
yuk:
) and the missed hits throughout the album all make this a poor experience for any keyboard player. On Damnation Game, he has put some effort into practicing and there are few mistakes playing-wise, but the parts are still boring or very out of place, the patches are still terrible and the solos are nondescript or just pure tasteless(Damnation Game). DWOT has slightly better patches(he probably bought a new keyboard), slightly better solos(the one in Candlelight Fantasia is actually quite good), and slightly better overall patches, but it still misses the mark for me. Not until Twilight in Olympus did I start enjoying his playing.
First of all, on TIO MP used two new keyboards, a Roland Jp-8000(a Virtual Analog synth that tries to emulate the analog synthezisers of the 70`s and early 80`s digitally)and a Korg Trinity(one of the best synthezisers ever made, with several groundbreaking innovations, owned by yours truly). Even though he only used preset patches on these(I played around with the intro patch on Lady of the Snow before I went to school this morning)they still sounded eons better than the shitty Korg 01/W(a cheap general purpose board from the early 90`s)patches he used before. The playing is also more interesting than the previous efforts, even though solos could easily be more interesting(mostly improvised scale-fests). On V, Pinnella for the first time does a GOOD job. His playing on it is seriously good. Parts are well-crafted, solos are interesting(well, not always, but most of the time)and his patches suit the songs.
Odyssey gave me the hope that we would see more of Pinnellas piano playing in the future. The piano part in the middle of Awakenings is haunting and even though it lacked the climax that it needs toward the end, that part alone made my day. Pinnella shows that he has evolved from mediocre neo-classical keyboardist to a mature and conscious musician, even though he`s not on the level of greats like Keith Emerson, Wakeman, and of course my personal favourite; Richard West. I hope to see him shine on the next records.
As for the original comparison, Pinnella gets my vote.
