MICHAEL DERVANreviews Freddy Kempf (piano) at the NCH, Dublin

Rachmaninov– Corelli Variations

Chopin– Ballades Nos 1 3

Liszt – Dante Sonata

Wagner/Liszt– Isoldens Liebestod

Liszt– Mephisto Waltz No 1

The first time I heard British pianist Freddy Kempf was the strangest. It was at an hour-long BBC recital in Belfast, and he played all 12 of Liszt’s “Études d’exécution transcendante” as if he were engaged in some kind of race against the clock.

The second strangest has to be his recital at the National Concert Hall where, in a mixed programme of Rachmaninov, Chopin and Liszt, he sounded once again as if speed were a consideration to be placed above all others.

Kempf is a well-established artist now in his early thirties. Here, he played like a youngster half his age with a lot to prove – as if all the pieces had been approached with showiness as highest priority.

Kempf, of course, has a lot to show. He has an ear for sensuous piano sound. He has fleet, strong fingers and wrists that can rattle out rapid octave passages without visible fatigue. In spite of that, however, he often created an impression not unlike that of a driver whose accelerator pedal is stuck, and is forced to career around corners and through obstacles at clearly dangerous speeds.

The effect was to make Rachmaninov’s “Corelli” Variations sound exceptionally patchy, and to offer the two Chopin Ballades with a rough-hewn, erratic narrative. Even the three pieces by Liszt, which might have been expected to accommodate the approach better, suffered. The spectacular writing of the “Dante” Sonata and “Mephisto” Waltz sounded forced, and the swells and surges of the operatic original were hard to discern in the transcription from Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”.

There were, of course, moments to cherish, most of all in the first of his two encores, Chopin’s Nocturne in D flat, where the lyricism and calm served as a reminder of quite how one-sided the rest of the evening had been.