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| | Arts Calendar / November 23 / Concerts |
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 Freddy Kempf (piano, UK) together with State Symphony Capella of Russia, Conductor Valery Polyansky will perform Brahms, Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra and Beethoven, Symphony No. 7. Freddy Kempf is one of today’s most successful young artists performing to sell-out audiences all over the world. He has built a unique reputation both as an explosive and physical performer not afraid to take risks as well as serious, sensitive and profoundly musical artist. Born in London in 1977 Freddy began piano lessons at the young age of four. He came to national prominence in 1992 when he won the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition following a memorable performance of Rachmaninov Paganini Variations. It was perhaps his award of third prize in the 1998 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow that rapidly established his international career. For him not to have won the first prize provoked protests from the audience and an outcry in the Russian press, which proclaimed him "the hero of the competition" and his unprecedented popularity with Russian audiences since then has been reflected in several sold-out concerts and numerous television broadcasts. Freddy records exclusively for BIS Records, for whom he has recorded recital discs of Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Schumann and his most recent release includes the works of Mussorgsky, Ravel and Balakirev. This recording has already been received with critical acclaim being chosen as Editor’s Choice in the Gramophone Magazine and Geoffrey Norris writes for the Telegraph that: Freddy Kempf here tackles three giants of the piano repertoire and conquers them with spirit and imagination. Armed with all the necessary technical resources, he is able to bring colour and well-defined character to Pictures from an Exhibition, revealing how ingeniously Mussorgsky exploited the piano's palette of sound without the aid of all those later arrangers who chose to embellish it with orchestral timbres. One of those was Ravel, whose Gaspard de la nuit here glows, ripples and, in "Scarbo", bristles with malevolence. The bravura of Balakirev's Islamey is brilliant.
Moscow Conservatory Great Hall  |
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