Freddy Kempf has strong ideas about how Chopin’s Ballades should go, yet problems occur when these ideas don’t correspond to what Chopin wanted. This is especially true in the First Ballade, where the pianist’s virtues and drawbacks merit detailed description. In the introduction, Kempf makes a large ritard over measure 33’s last four notes that undermines the harmonic piquancy of the subsequent downbeat C-sharp. From bars 36 to 39, Kempf disregards Chopin’s a tempo directive by elongating each right hand octave to no palpable purpose, and overshoots the piu mosso‘s speed limit at measure 45. The E-flat major meno mosso section is shapeless and lurching, and Kempf doesn’t trust that Chopin really means a tempo where the main theme materializes in A minor. Here the pianist gets too loud too soon, thereby telegraphing Chopin’s first genuine fortissimo in the same way an inexperienced straightman steps on a comedian’s punchlines. But Kempf brilliantly launches into the più animato with effortless ascending right hand octaves, and enlivens the scherzando with rhythmic pointing that illuminates rather than cheapens Chopin’s textures. Yet Kempf’s (as opposed to Chopin’s) ritard in bar 179 totally quashes the tenor line’s polyrhythmic “four against six” effect. The coda, though, is uncommonly clear and scintillating. Traditionally, pianists begin the accelerando on the fiery, upward scale passages rather than on the sextuplet figures before (measures 253 and 257). Here though, Kempf actually takes Chopin’s wishes on faith, and the effect is revelatory.
Kempf’s introduction to the Second Ballade is admirably straightforward, lacking just that last soupçon of grace and repose in the manner of Perahia and Richter. The turbulent middle section, however, is powerfully articulated, but Kempf’s machine-gun repeated chords in the Agitato section beat the passage’s musical meaning to a bloody pulp. Moments of genuine lyricism intertwine with unbridled arrogance throughout the Third Ballade. Some listeners may feel the Fourth Ballade to lack poetry and nuance. I actually found Kempf’s hard-nosed, businesslike approach refreshing, but only for a couple of minutes. Compare, for instance, Claudio Arrau’s gorgeous voicings at bar 135, or his majestically weighed chords just before the stretto, or take Horowitz’s measured polyphony in the opening section, and suddenly you’ll hear the depth, anguish, and structural complexity behind the notes.
The Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise proves just as callow, sectionalized, and unsubtle as I remember from Kempf’s Wigmore Hall performance several seasons ago. He holds back in the lyrical opening, then plows through the transitional section infinitely faster than the Polonaise to come (the tempos should be identical). Don’t try to dance or tap your feet to the Polonaise proper, because, to paraphrase Duke Ellington, it just ain’t got that swing, let alone the pinpointed filigree pianists like Horowitz, Rubinstein, and Hofmann command. The Fantasie Impromptu plays out on one emotional level in its present loud, notey, and headache-inducing state.
Most of Kempf’s phrase groupings in the Polonaise Fantasie, I wager, are governed by how they feel in his hands and fingers rather than where the music is going. Otherwise, the central chordal trills would build to a terrifying climax rather than just stroll by–or Kempf wouldn’t have pounded out the coda’s triplet chords to the point where you can barely hear the pitches. Given the control, intelligence, insight, and maturity distinguishing Kempf’s recent CD featuring Beethoven’s last three sonatas, his Chopin, by contrast, has a lot of growing up to do.
