As promised, the final instalment in the reviews for this year's Singapore
International Piano Festival.  The closing recital featured the young
British (but of German and Japanese ancestry), Freddy Kempf.

   THE STRAITS TIMES
   JUL 5, 2000

   ENTER A NEW GOLDEN AGE OF PIANO

   7TH INTERNATIONAL PIANO FESTIVAL
   Freddy Kempf, piano
   Sunday, Victoria Concert Hall

   By LIONEL CHOI

   I WONDER if people really know what they are talking about when they
   speak of the hallowed Golden Age of piano-playing, the grand era of
   Horowitz, Cherkassky, Moiseiwitsch and Hofmann.

   Ah yes, Josef Hofmann -- that notorious figure who is as
   widely-misunderstood as he is worshipped -- and it is entirely to
   22-year-old British virtuoso Freddy Kempf's credit that such a great
   name should spring to mind immediately.

   One could spend days debating the merits, or the lack thereof, in
   Kempf's way with his tough programme for his eagerly-anticipated
   Singapore debut on Sunday, comprising four of Liszt's Transcendental
   Etudes, Prokofiev's Seventh Sonata and all four Ballades by Chopin.

   But whichever faction you support, it is hard to quarrel with the
   fact that here was highly-individual playing from a musician who
   identified strongly -- sometimes overwhelmingly so -- with the essence
   that ran through the veins of each piece, and the intense effect was
   likely to polarise an audience.

   Liszt thrives on blistering temperament:  The dramatic items were
   rightly despatched with barnstorming vehemence, those terrifying
   rapid-fire chords in Wilde Jagd, in particular, rendered with torrential
   aggression, though the treble range was not quite so responsive.

   By contrast, Ricordanza was an aromatic blend of a beautiful singing
   melody against a pricelessly-exquisite decorative backdrop, while
   the indestructibly-permanent edifice of sonority in Harmonies du soir
   was breathtaking.

   The Prokofiev sonata might have benefited from some degree of patience
   in the build-up of drama.

   Then again, would the iconoclastic Russian enfant terrible really
   have grumbled that a young, daring and accomplished race-driver was
   taking his lean, mean war-machine down an empty autobahn at a dangerous
   but thrilling speed, negotiating bends with a daredevil spirit of
   adventure, all to electrifying effect that had spectators at the edge
   of their seats? I doubt it.

   The greatest controversy, however, lay in the pianist's volatile
   approach to the post-interval repertoire, Chopin's enigmatic Ballades,
   the last of which surely representing romantic expression at its most
   liberated.

   Was it all irresponsible, uncontrolled gibberish, an imperious result
   of artistic cynicism? After all, the swashbuckling coda of the Fourth
   Ballade, in particular, was a veritable mess.

   He might have been over-zealous, but I know for a fact that Kempf
   loves this music too much to be disrespectful.

   The huge risks taken were allied to his natural feeling for the larger
   musical forms, his mastery in zapping even the most overlooked of
   phrases to spine-tingling life second to none.  And because of this,
   the A-flat Ballade was such a rich success.

   I have heard too many "live" tapes of Kempf's playing to take criticism
   that he is a banger with temperament and fingers and nothing else,
   seriously.

   In his time, Hofmann sported such generous musicianship by taking
   all sorts of indulgences even when it might have been inappropriate;
   but in the end, we love them all the same.

   Incidentally, we were lucky to be the last audience to have heard
   Kempf's Chopin Ballades before he records them in Stockholm; maybe
   there will be tighter control and sharper focus in the preserved
   performances, but one hopes the passion and individuality remain.

   Now how is that for entering a new Golden Age in the new millennium?

   Copyright (c) 2000 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

Best regards,
Lionel Choi
Singapore