With his precise, melodic style and the subtle ways he held back notes to create suspense, Wilhelm Kempff was one of the first concert pianists to record complete works by the great German composers and became a hugely popular and influential giant of the classical music world.
Born in Potsdam, Germany Kempff's childhood was defined by music and religion, with his father, grandfather and later his brother all working as organists and musical directors at protestant churches. After picking up the basics from his family, he started studying music and composition at the age of nine at the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin and had private lessons with the great Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni who taught him in detail the transcriptions of Bach.
In his twenties he headed out on tours of Europe, South America and Japan (where he had an island named in his honour) and he became musical director at the Wurttemberg Conservatory in Stuttgart and after the Second World War he returned to Paris, making his debut in London in 1951. With his first acoustic recordings as a soloist in 1920, it was his masterful renditions of Beethoven and Schubert's complete sonatas that became landmark pieces of the era and helped make his albums for Deutsche Grammophon highly sought after.
He was also admired for his lyrical, rhythmic take on Bach cantatas and his interpretation of romantic composers like Schubert and Schumann and he later worked with chamber orchestras led by Yehudi Menuhin, Pierre Fournier and Paul Grummer. Setting up a home and music school in Positano, Southern Italy, he passed on his ideas about the importance of spirituality and technique to new generations and continued performing until 1981 before he began suffering with Parkinson's Disease. He died at home in Positano in 1991 aged 95 from a stroke, but his music courses were continued by proteges Gerhard Oppitz and John O'Conor.
