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
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