On track: Blowing away the cobwebs

By WILLIAM DART

Kemp English has a fairly low profile, although the Dunedin-based fortepianist has produced our first CD to feature performances on the sort of instrument with which Mozart and Beethoven would have been familiar.

The fortepiano in question, built by the Americans Thomas and Barbara Wolf, after a late 18th-century Anton Walter original, is in a collection at the University of Otago. It's a fine instrument, capable of producing the most liquid of cantabile, along with passagework which really sparkles. Only occasionally, in its upper range, is it tonally pinched.

English admits his interpretative approach is middle-of-the-road, halfway between the authenticists and the modern grand brigade. Using what he describes as "historically informed performance" he intends to offer "a vibrant breath of fresh air blowing away the cobwebs from an established tradition".

Well, it's certainly never dull and there is much evidence of sensitive musicianship, particularly in the colours English draws from his instrument. However, his cavalier treatment of ornamentation in the Finales of the Beethoven Pathetique and Mozart's K 330 does startle.

A tendency to splatter grace notes like flies on a windscreen is rather bizarre and certainly out of place in a defenceless Haydn sonata.

Elsewhere, touches of ornamentation, while they might surprise, can be apt and often charming, especially so in Mozart's C minor Fantasia, which occasionally thunders in its passions.

The most unusual offering is a Dussek B flat Sonata. Its graceful Rondo, teased out with the subtlest of rubato, reminds me of Tomasek's comment that this composer could draw sounds from the instrument that were "delicious and at the same time emphatic"; English does just this.

For many, the most familiar work is the Pathetique, and English makes the most of the high-powered introduction, although the click and clatter of the mechanism is especially distracting. He storms single-mindedly through the Allegro sections, and his winning touch almost, just almost, distracts one from what sounds to my ear like tuning problems in the slow movement.

With all its peccadilloes, this is an attractive package and deserves support.

* Kemp English at the Fortepiano (Manu Plus MANU 5001)