What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part II)
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23 October
What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part II)
On Tuesday 28 October at 7.30 p.m., pianist Freddy Kempf is due to give a recital of works for solo piano by Beethoven, Schubert and Tchaikovsky
I first heard Freddy Kempf in chamber music as part of Cambridge Summer Music Festival some years ago, when he played a programme in the hall at King’s College – Tchaikovsky’s titanic Piano Trio in A Minor, Op. 50, and also Dvořák's Trio No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 90 (B. 166).
The power of the music, transmuted and transported by the energy of the young players, was instantly appealing. It seemed that he must be related to the German pianist Wilhelm Kempff (though the difference in spelling of the surname had gone unnoticed), whose recording of a selection of Preludes and Fugues from Book I of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (Das Wohltemperierte Klavier) had been such a feature of my late teenage years (and, of recent years, Kempff's recordings of the Schubert Sonatas for Piano (in a boxed set, also from Deutsche Grammophon - @DGclassics)):
However, whereas other on-line pieces make no mention of the connection, a biography by Robert Cummings states that Freddy is Wilhelm Kempff's grandson. (The name, however spelt, actually relates to the German word ‘kämpfen’, meaning 'to fight' or 'to struggle' (as, unfortunately, also in Mein Kampf).)
Five years ago, Kempf gave a Liszt and Beethoven recital at The Corn Exchange in Cambridge (@CambridgeCornEx), where one highlight was the so-called Dante Sonata (properly Après une Lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata, published in the ‘Deuxième année: Italie’ of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage), where the passion and drama were patent, as well as Liszt and Kempf’s musicianship.
His Corn Exchange recital on Tuesday is as Artist in Residence, and includes the late Piano Sonata in A Major (D. 959) by Franz Schubert, written, with two other Sonatas for Piano (D. 958 and 960), in 1828, the last year of his life. (There is also an earlier Sonata in A Major (D. 664, Op. Posth.), which is thought to date to the Summer of 1819, and which, as with D. 959, was not published in his life-time.)
By contrast with Winterreise, Op. 89 (D. 911), the proofs of whose second part* the dying composer famously corrected, and which was published on 30 December 1828 (Schubert had died on 19 November), these works did not appear in print until 1838 to 1839. Possibly in the same way as Beethoven’s late piano works, in which Piano Sonata No. 27 (in E Minor, Op. 90) is sometimes grouped (also on Tuesday's programme), these sonatas of Schubert’s were not easily assimilable to begin with, although now much cherished.
Favourite recorded interpretations of Schubert have included Maurizio Pollini’s of the Wanderer-Fantasie, and Alfred Brendel’s of the D. 664 sonata. Very recently, though, Imogen Cooper’s three-CD all-Schubert release of live recordings has coupled the last three sonatas with other repertoire, where, in the Sonata in A Major, we can hear the same fragmentation (and use of an advanced approach to modulation) as in parts of the composer’s late string quartets (probably most clearly in its final movement (Rondo : Allegretto – Presto), which feels to be the heart of the work).
Or even the disintegration of music and meaning of Winterreise, from where we can look down the decades to texts and settings such as, for example, Georg Büchner’s and Alban Berg’s.
The joy of the recital that Freddy Kempf is bringing us, with these late (or, in the case of the Tchaikovsky (the Grand Sonata [in G Major], Op. 37), at least mature) compositions of stature and breadth, is that it gives great scope for them to find synergy in each other, and for the pianist to discover new truths in them with which to present us.
End-notes
* The first part of Winterreise had been published on 14 January (1828), just as Wilhelm Müller's texts appeared in February and October 1827 (each part containing twelve poems).
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
