Partita No 4 In D - Bach
Piano Sonata In A, D 959 - Schubert
Ballades 1-4 - Chopin
For his first appearance at the NCH, last Wednesday, the young English pianist Freddy Kempf offered a programme that promised much in its selection of works of dignified stature and contrasting styles, from the restraint of Bach to the vehemence of Chopin.
The dance movements of Bach's Partita No 4 were nicely and neatly characterised; instead of the technical names of Allemande, Courante and so on, they could have been entitled Le Penseur, La Jolie and so on, the new names indicating the way in which Kempf humanised the austerity of the composer's imagination. There was no playing to the gallery, no softening or exaggeration, but an overall clarity and an immensely subtle treatment of dynamics. Every line was a melody, and together or apart, fast or slow, they were a joy.
Of Schubert's last three sonatas, that in A is the least ominous, as the general brooding quality is transformed into a wistful yearning that occupies only some of the time. The slow movement is perhaps the heart of the work, and here Kempf produced an extraordinary effect by playing with almost no expression and almost no fluctuations in speed and at a low dynamic level. Never has music spoken more clearly, and one dared not move for fear of breaking the spell.
One pictures the aristocratic Chopin languidly peeling off his white gloves and reluctantly performing in public; the opening of the Ballades do not contradict this, but as the music becomes more and more tempestuous, all trace of hauteur vanishes. Kempf if anything emphasised these two aspects of the composer, but it could be that the sense of one personality behind the music was not fully realised.
