Prokofiev was one of the few 20th-century composers to write extensively for the piano and one of the first to discover the instrument’s percussive potential. Like Beethoven he completed five piano concertos in the earlier part of his career. There have been several complete surveys from Prokofiev specialists but relatively few pianists pair the Second and Third alone. While Freddy Kempf’s remarkably generous 80-minute programme is unique, in his chosen concertos he goes head to head with Evgeny Kissin, forceful and dazzling in live performance. Kempf’s contained sonority and generally thoughtful approach make for a less oppressive, more variegated effect which may or may not be authentic. Writing in these pages, David Fanning was not convinced that Kissin had the measure of the lyrical and subversive element in these works despite his stunningly articulated surfaces. Prokofiev himself was often described as a brutal pianist yet his own 78rpm set of the Third Concerto has a softer grain than the legend suggests.

In the G minor Concerto the composer presents us with a first subject in the style of Rachmaninov and Kempf treats it with greater intimacy than either Alexander Toradze (Philips, 4/98 – nla) or Vladimir Ashkenazy (as pianist). Of the various accompanists Andrew Litton and his Bergen forces seem the most attentive and detailed, even if it’s BIS’s impressively translucent sound engineering that really makes the difference. For once you can hear the orchestra interacting with the soloist. The first movement’s elaborately hazardous cadenza strikes out into a brand of grotesquerie that at least one early critic found “unbearable…such a musical mess that one might think [it] created by capriciously emptying an inkwell on the paper.” Here Kempf is less flamboyant than some, perhaps seeking to make musical sense of the argument. The second movement is as lithe and scintillating as one might wish. Though somehow less “Russian” than usual, the rendition as a whole is finely honed, suitably mercurial and certain to impress. Yes, I have heard Third Piano Concertos boasting even greater individuality (see above) but the rarely recorded Second Sonata, centrally placed on the disc, is a considerable bonus.

With good design, full recording information and a useful booklet-note from Andrew Huth, here is a dazzling successor to the pianist’s earlier Prokofiev recital (BIS, A/03).