Freddy Kempf

Freddy Kempf (born 1977) is a British pianist born in Croydon to a German father and a Japanese mother. He now lives in Berlin.

He was educated at St Edmund's School, Canterbury and the Royal Academy of Music. Taking up the piano at the age of four under Ronald Smith, Kempf first caught the attention of British concertgoers four years later when he played Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 12, K. 414, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. The child virtuoso was shortly invited to Germany to repeat his performance. In 1987, Kempf won the first National Mozart Competition in England and in 1992, was named BBC Young Musician of the Year for his performance of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. He won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1996 which led to his New York City recital debut at Carnegie Hall.

In a remarkable turn of events, Kempf's early adult career ironically benefited from his failure to win the 1998 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, where the first prize in the piano section went instead to Denis Matsuev. Apparently, some judges had wanted to award the first prize jointly to Matsuev and Kempf, and had successfully negotiated with the Russian Culture Ministry for the additional funding. However, Kempf only collected the third prize in the end, which provoked a barrage of indignant protests from both the audience and the Russian press, who accused some of the judges of bias, especially towards contestants who also happened to be their former pupils. In April 1999, Kempf returned to Moscow with a series of television broadcasts and sold-out concerts. His popularity has been compared with that garnered by American pianist Van Cliburn who, in a different result in 1958, had won the inaugural Competition.

Kempf has continued to perform solo, chamber and concertante music in Europe, the Americas, East Asia and Australia, and has recorded recital discs of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and Schumann. He was voted Best Young British Classical Performer in the Classical BRIT Awards in 2001.

In 2000 he formed the Kempf Trio, with Pierre Bensaid (violin) and Alexander Chaushian (cello). The trio has been well received on the continent, as well as in their international concerts. Now London based and well received in Europe, they have appeared at the Flanders Festival in Belgium and in France at the Orpheus & Bacchus Festival. "The ensemble made its United States debut in the chamber music series at La Jolla, California, and in Scottsdale, Phoenix."[Arizona]*

• Quote appears (unattributed) in the liner notes from the Trio's BIS-SACD-1172 (www.bis.se) an all Beethoven disc: - Op. 1 No. 3 and Op. 57 "Archduke" Trios. Also on BIS: Tchaikovsky: Trio Op. 50 and Rachmaninov: Trio 'elegiaque' No. 1 on BIS-CD-1302, ibid.

• ^ "Young Pianist Conquers Moscow". International Herald Tribune. 28 April 1999. 
• "Fair Play at Music Contest". The Moscow News.