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You just never know until you go.
Freddy Kempf, the 23-year-old British pianist who has had
London music lovers clamoring for tickets to his concerts,
was supposed to be the slamdunk champion of this week's opening
lineup in the Miami Festival of Discovery for young pianists.
But the festival lived up to its name, and it presented a
real discovery: Denis Burstein, a 22-year-old genius from
Moscow.
Not that Kempf, who came first, was a calamitous letdown.
He has gobs of talent, including trip-hammer fingers and a
penchant for taking pieces at a furious clip that made Schumann's
Toccata possible the fastest performance on record. There
were good things about it even at that lightning pace, notably
the softly light-fingered passages, despite some blurring.
But there was also a lot of exaggeratedly loud grandstanding
in Rachmaninoff's Second Sonata, which Kempf powered up as
if he'd been listening too much to Vladimir Horowitz's volcanic
recordings. Naturally it takes talent even to imitate Horowitz,
but that crashingly loud climax lacked taste, and there's
far more poetry in the music than Kempf found.
His Chopin Third Sonata, despite incisive moments, was highly
episodic, and he was not able to hold together the fierce
struggle and aftermath of ineffable calm that is Beethoven's
last sonata, Op. 111. Even technically, there were mishaps,
and Kempf seemed to want to stun his audience into submission.
He has great promise, if he's allowed to mature, quits showing
off, and premature success doesn't ruin him.
Burstein, however, is of a completely different order, along
the lines of Yevgeny Kissin (in fact, a product of the same
Moscow school where he recently was named the youngest professor
in its history).
His program was alluring a Prelude and Fugue by Taneyev,
Prokofiev's Eighth Sonata, the Kreisler-Rachmaninoff Liebesfreud,
two preludes each by Scriabin and Medtner, topped off with
Stravinsky's Petrouchka. But the way he played it all was
spectacular for his creativity in phrasing, clarity and logic.
And except for a few slips, his playing was breathtaking.
This is a thin, bespectacled, bushy-haired kid who sits down
at the piano, knowing exactly what he wants to do, and does
it. Never mind that he dropped a note or two sustaining a
breakneck tempo in Petrouchka - his projection and understanding
of the piece were exceptional. And the Prokofiev was unusual
for perceptive highlighting of inner detail - the mind of
a composer at work, for Burstein also writes his own bluesy
music. The plum, though, was his perfect Rachmaninoff Liebesfreud
and his poetic yet seething Scriabin and Medtner.
This was Burstein's official U.S. debut. But the word is
out. Conductor Kurt Masur recently heard him and has invited
him to perform in Germany.
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