One of the world’s foremost concert pianists, Alfred Brendel is admired especially for his sensitive interpretations of the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, Haydn, and Liszt.
Alfred Brendel was born in Wiesenberg (in the former Czechoslovakia), in 1931, but spent his childhood in Zagreb. He displayed an early interest in music, which was encouraged by his parents, and began studying piano at the age of six with Sofia Dezelic. In 1943, his family moved to Graz, Austria, and there he was taught composition and piano by several important tutors, including Paul Michel (b. 1918), Edward Steuermann (1892–1964), and Edwin Fischer (1886–1960). It was the latter who had the most profound influence on Brendel’s interpretive approach to music.
In 1948, Brendel made his debut recital in Graz, and the following year won a prize in the Busoni Competition in Bolzano, Italy. This success encouraged him to pursue a career as a pianist (rather than in writing or painting, which were two other early areas of interest).
During the 1950s, Brendel performed mainly in Austria, but made many recordings that gained him an international reputation, among them performances of the works of Liszt, Mozart, and Schubert. Most significantly, Brendel was the first musician to record the complete piano works of Beethoven. So successful were these recordings that in 1962 he performed all the Beethoven piano sonatas in a series of concerts held in London’s Wigmore Hall, and in the following year he embarked on the first of many popular recital tours of North America.
Since then, Brendel has performed in concert halls all over the world. His repertoire ranges from Bach to Schubert and Mussorgsky to BARTÓOK, although he is best known as a performer of late 18th- and early 19th-century music. His interpretations of Schubert have helped to stimulate a renewed interest in that composer’s piano works. But Brendel has also made his mark with 20th century music by performing piano pieces by STRAVINSKY and establishing SCHOENBERG’S Piano Concerto as part of the standard classical concert repertoire.
Brendel’s playing is praised for its subtlety of tone and colour, and sensitivity to the composer’s individual style. Although he performs with great intensity of feeling, he approaches a piece of music analytically, studying its structure in great detail. His concerts have occasionally been criticised for being too eccentric, but equally he has been lauded for his sympathetic interpretations.
An accomplished writer, Brendel has published many essays on music. His first collection of essays, entitled Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts, which covers a wide range of topics including Beethoven’s use of dynamics (variations in loudness) in his piano works, Liszt’s style of playing, and the “electrifying” teaching methods of Edwin Fischer. Typically, the scholarship in these essays is lightened by perceptive, often witty, observations on contemporary fashions in music.
Besides his many concert engagements, Brendel often gives master classes, most famously at the Vienna Festival during the 1960s as well as at the Cheltenham Festival in 1973. His list of recordings is enormous, and on the occasion of his 65th birthday, in 1996, Philips issued a 25-CD boxed set called The Art of Alfred Brendel, which contains some of the most outstanding recorded performances from his remarkable career.
Eleanor Van Zandt
SEE ALSO:
CHAMBER MUSIC; FESTIVALS AND EVENTS
Brendel, Alfred. Musical Thoughts & Afterthoughts
(New York: Noonday, 1992);
Brendel, Alfred. Music Sounded Out
(New York: Noonday, 1992).
Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas (1995);
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 9 in E Flat (1978);
Schubert: Piano Quintet in A, “The Trout”
(The Cleveland Quartet).