The key The to Freddy's success

When 27-year-old Freddy Kempf walks out onto the Barbican stage on Sat 19 Mar, the capacity crowd will greet him like a pop star. And he'll look the part, with an Armani coat over his black polo- neck, and dark locks brushed back to reveal features which blend masculine force and feminine sensitivity. But he's not a pop star, he's a classical pianist, and he'll deliver a programme of Chopin and Beethoven thatwould daunt the most seasoned virtuoso: this may not be his London debut, but it will mark his arrival in the big league.

Yet few musicians' careers have developed by such fits and starts. His gave his debut recital at four in a Folkestone church, and, at 14, was voted the BBC's Young Musician Of The Year the youngest-ever winner at that time then duly signed up with an agency. That should have set the seal on his success, but rather than taking off, he dropped from view. There's nothing sadder or less saleable than a prodigy who's no longer young, and the adolescent Kempf was, therefore, no longer able to trade on his tender years.

Despite his talent, after four increasingly dispiriting years the agency gave up and dropped him.

Those teenage years coincided with his German hotelier father's passage from boom to bust, and, as he tells his tale, there's an almost Dickensian pathos in his concern with the avoidance of hard times. His Japanese grandmother had given him a brand-new Steinway, and he went in for a string of competitions to pay off a loan he'd taken out against it, but he still had to sell it in the end.

The first time I saw him in action was at a Royal Academy masterclass around that time: the visiting guru was seriously miffed to find this 18-year-old playing a tumultuous piece of Schumann with a finesse he himself couldn't achieve. Kempf was clearly a boy to watch.

Behind his laid-back manner you could sense vaulting artistic ambition.

Nine years on, he freely admits to being ambitious 'maybe overambitious- but this doesn't mean that he chooses the showiest pieces. 'I'm only interested in music that expresses feeling, and in Schumann's above all. My priorities in life mirror very closely what he wanted to express the notion of loving and being loved.' Does the fact that his Russian wife, Sofia, is also a pianist cause competitive tensions? 'Not really, because, apart from the Rachmaninov concerti, we don't play the same repertoire.' He recently had to learn one of the works she regularly plays, and took care to practise it on his silent Yamaha keyboard: 'I didn't want either to inflict it on her, or to feel that she was listening critically.' The trouble about the two of them having solo careers, he adds, is that touring schedules his increasingly take him to Japan keep them apart.

But after all those early false starts it was Russia, and Schumann, which singled him out from his talented peers at the Academy, and set him on the path to success. At 21 he went in for the Tchaikovsky Competition piano playing's equivalent to the Olympics and, despite hostile machinations by the Moscow piano mafia, managed to win third prize. There were extraordinary scenes when the results were announced, with the critics making it clear they thought he should have won: Kempf found himself deluged with flowers and propositions from female fans. 'I felt inspired,' he says of his playing on that final day, and when you listen to the live recording of his rendition of Schumann's 'Humoreske' by turns dreamy, sumptuous, and wild it's hard to believe that such chaste perfection could have emerged under the inhuman pressure of the occasion.

Since Kempf's relationship with his audience is a love affair of sorts, his sartorial preoccupation makes sense. 'Style is at the core of my performing life,' he explains. 'It's an extension of my playing. Through music I try to communicate with people, and the way I present myself on stage is part of that.' Then he goes into analytical mode. 'But I'm not vain I don't particularly like what I see in the mirror.

At 14, pianist Freddy Kempf became the youngest winner of the BBC Young Musician Of The Year award.

Then his career went into freefall.

Now, at 27, he's back in the big league with a virtuoso programme at the Barbican. He talks to Michael Church When I was growing up in Croydon I got teased a lot at school. Partly because I was a very tidy child, a year or two younger than the rest of the class; partly because my piano-playing meant I didn't do much sport and partly because I'm half Asian. Maybe that taught me to try to blend in with my surroundings. It certainly reinforced my teenage belief that I wouldn't have much luck with the opposite sex and I still feel insecure in that way. The only place I feel really sure of myself is on stage.' For the past eight years he's had a parallel career as leader of the Kempf Trio, whose concerts have had routinely glowing reviews, but when I ask how that strand is now going, suddenly he looks sad and embarrassed. 'You couldn't have chosen a worse day for your question,' he groans. 'We're in the middle of an acrimonious split, and we're all devastated.

We've grown together musically, but grown apart personally. I suppose that's the risk you take when you forge an intense relationship in your teens. But we've had eight years of fantastic and passionate music-making.'

For him, it seems, a solitary road now beckons.

But he's happy about this, especially as it's taking him into ever-bigger venues. 'I'm now playing in 4,000 or 5,000 seaters like the Royal Albert Hall, or the huge auditoria they have in Japan. Audiences like me in big venues, and I enjoy it too. I'm interested to see where this path will lead.'

He never suffers from nerves, but he does admit to having butterflies when he considers his impending gig at the Barbican.

'I've played some of the pieces on this programme since I was six, but it's always different in your home town.' Next stop is Sydney, where he'll play all Beethoven's concertos in three power- packed nights. Then off to a wine-and-music festival in France where he'll play the violin. But that's just a sideline: the piano's the thing, and kept in trim by sessions in the gym he's master of it all.

Freddy Kempf, Sat 19 Mar, Barbican, Silk Street, EC2 (0845 120 7550).

Freddy Kempf's recordings are available on the Bis label.

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