Campf biography

Wilhelm Kempf. Its piano genealogy really goes back to the brilliant compatriot, because the teacher of the Campfa in the piano class in the Berlin Higher Music School Heinrich Bart studied with Bulov and Tausig, they were from the sheet, and the last - at Beethoven. But the artist’s interest in the music of his distant predecessor is explained not only by this, but also by a kind of spiritual relationship between them, which allowed him to penetrate deeply into the music of a brilliant creator, to feel it from the inside and become, as it were, its inner integral part.

As he himself said, “you need to plunge into the culture of the Beethoven era, into the atmosphere that gave birth to this great music, and again revive it today.” And the campfu actually succeeded like no one else. And not only in relation to Beethoven, but, although to a lesser extent, other composers of his country - Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Schuman, Brahms, who were almost as close to him and understandable.

What you can’t say, for example, about the representatives of other national cultures - Chopin and Liszt, which he also performed, but far from so successful. The game of Campf is perceived not as a conventional concert performance, but as a conversation directly between the listener and the author who introduces us to his composition, explains and shows it to us from all sides, with only a unique personality intonation inherent in him.

The pianist acts here as a full -fledged co -author of the work, the alter of the ego composer. This approach allows the musician for a long time and thoroughly immerse himself in the work of a particular author, to play the same works for many years, discovering new meanings in them all the time. So, he regularly, throughout his long summer career, turned to all the sonatas and 5 piano concerts of Beethoven, constantly included them in his programs, while practically not repeating and each time reproducing them differently, but always equally convincingly.

Here, of course, his own composer work in different genres also affected - opera, symphony, ballet, song, instrumental music. And although the level of these works is incomparable with his piano skill, he constantly felt himself on a par with the great creators of the past, which helped him to penetrate even deeper into their musical world. Campf spoke on stage almost all his life, giving annually from 80 to concerts, that is, he played every 3-4 days.

And such a dense schedule has been preserved by him for more than six decades, until the summer age. Over the years of his career, he visited almost all countries of Europe, Asia and America, and not only as a soloist, but also as part of a trio. In Japan alone, the musician toured 10 times, where one of the six and a half thousand Japanese islands were even named after him. In addition, he left more than 70 composer work, including several large theatrical and vocal-symphonic works, and also taught for almost the entire life-he regularly led private lessons and master classes, was the rector of the Stuttgart Conservatory, opened a summer piano school in the city of his childhood Potsdam, which existed until the end of the 2nd world war, and in the post-war years, and in the post-war years.

He organized and headed music courses in a picturesque Italian place Positano, not far from Naples. In the same place, in the year of life, he died. But in addition to all this, the Campf continuously conducted studio grams, starting with the release of the first vinyl records of the beginning of the 10ths of the last century, and ending with the latest stereo audio and video disks.

The most important in the phonotex carried out by him are the cycles of all piano sonatas and Beethoven's concerts recorded by him twice, in the e -e, as well as recording all the sonata for piano Schubert, to which he had already come to the slope of life and re -opened them to the general public. The great importance of the performing art of Kempf, the immense scale and the highest level of the sound heritage left by him allow him to be attributed to the number of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century.

The text is Anatoly Lysenkov.