Freddy Kempf’s recital provides a racy alternative to Peter Dimitriew’s Prokofiev Arte Nova discs. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a more fascinating example of composer and youthful interpreter. Where Dimitriew is speculative and considered – often at the expense of character and vivacity – Kempf is joyfully exuberant, flashing through every savage challenge with the assurance and instinct of a born virtuoso.

His Toccata must surely rank among the fastest and friskiest on record, and his acknowledgement of what Prokofiev once called his ‘scherzo-ness’ in the finale of the Sixth Sonata is recreated with enviably light textures and scintillating rhythms. Hear him at 2'38" in the intricate elaboration of the First Sonata, or in his chacterisation of the Seventh Sonata’s finale (no mere sledge-hammer attack here) and you may wonder when you last heard such imaginative brio, nervous energy and aplomb.

He may overshoot the mark at 4'55" in the Sixth Sonata, where his momentary lack of composure masks the music’s underlying clarity, but he also shows in the same Sonata’s Tempo Di valzer lentissimo, and in the Allegretto’s central meno mosso, that when the heat is off he can relax into the most engaging sense of Prokofiev’s poetry. His steep, unmarked tempo change in the First Etude’s tranquillo is one of many daring and gloriously assured touches, illuminating a performance where dazzling facility and an uninhibited relish of the composer’s early fist-shaking defiance go hand in hand.

This is a superb disc, Kempf’s finest to date, and his Yamaha captures all the breathtaking fluency and sparkle of his fresh and vital pianism.