![Tchaikovsky, Grand Sonata & The Seasons (BIS).](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/QPEJR2QDJSSDFBHBD2DDWFPVHQ.jpg?auth=468ca0b968a6103a277be2923b4f847715d6be5b6a5772994af7ddd985da0256&width=16&height=16&quality=70&smart=true)
Playing Gershwin with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in 2012, Freddy Kempf was a sleek cheetah on the keys, caressing moody chromaticisms into sinuous life.
The English pianist almost achieves the same for Tchaikovsky's ambitiously-titled Grand Sonata on his latest CD, finding capriciousness and even coquetry where brawnier sensibilities are content with the rough-hewn.
The seams show in the wandering Andante of the sonata's second movement, but Kempf makes an idyllic ballet of it; the following Scherzo could, with brilliant orchestration, slip into the Russian's Pathetique Symphony.
Tchaikovsky's The Seasons, unlike Vivaldi's four concertos of the same name, outlines the year, month by month, in two characterful pieces.