Freddy Kempf plays Rachmaninov

Rachmaninoff’s Second Sonata … Kempf here chooses the longer version (he prefers the “spontaneous inspiration” of the original) and brings it to life in a performance which recalls Stravinsky’s comment to a boorish listener who complained that the length of Schubert’s later sonatas put him to sleep. “Yes,” said Stravinsky. “But when you awake, you think you are in heaven.”

The range of Kempf’s performance is established in the Sonata’s opening pages. The opening chords are molten gold and granite, balanced by chordal passagework ethereal in its lightness and timbral variety. Kempf has a generosity of spirit that enables him to play at the extreme ranges of dynamics and tempo without sacrificing either forward momentum or structural unity. Compared to Horowitz’s titanic interpretation of the work (the other great performance on record), I find Kempf more lyrical and refreshingly un-neurotic. This is not to say that there is any lack of virtuosity. The youthful impetuosity of the last movement is startling in its perfectly controlled wildness and passion. Moments of beauty are many. Listen to the thrilling geotectonic crescendo beginning at 4’50 in the first movement, conceived as a series of short eruptions climaxing at 6’04. Kempf’s technique permits him to propel these dynamically, as one would expect, but also through minute gradations of staccato and chordal voicing, interpretive procedures more usually found in performances of slow movements but here delivered with blazing speed and accuracy. The marvellously languid opening of the second movement, soft-grained yet beautifully projected, shows Kempf’s talent for innigkeit… The Etudes-Tableaux and Liebesleid find Kempf equally adept. My favourite, one out of many, is the deliciously morbid Etude No.2, “The Sea and Seagulls,” in a realization hypnotically lonely and sere. …”

\- Scott McBride Smith