Freddy Kempf was voted best Young British Classical Performer in the Classical Brit Awards of 2001. He had provoked an outcry in the Russian press when he only won third prize in the l998 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition. Kempf records exclusively for BIS label and has previously done discs of Beethoven, Liszt Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Schumann and two of the Chopin Ballades for the Swedish label.
His approach on these 24 Etudes is as though Chopin were not a frail fellow suffering from TB and who knows what, but a hearty athlete who can attack the keyboard with gusto when he wants to. His technical expertise is astonishing on the fast runs but Kempf is not all show – there is plenty of emotional weight when called for. The lyrical and dreamy etudes are properly communicated with great feeling. Boy, does he tear into the Revolutionary Etude, and it’s doubly exciting in the transparent clarity of the hi-res surround sound option. Even those etudes that I might have felt a bit of a bore in previous hearings take on more import in the fresh and committed Kempf performances. The piano sounds extremely wide again, but this time it’s because the listener is placed extremely close to it. It’s not a “stage” acoustic but more of a “in the crook” acoustic. Chopin up close.
– John Sunier
