Alfred Brendel was the most important performer of the central European piano repertory in recent times, especially of the music of the First Viennese School (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven), and of Schubert, Schumann, and Liszt.
by Till Fellner
Many publications have published substantial obituaries. Guardian’s HERE, WaPo HERE, and NYT HERE
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The Boston Symphony Orchestra community joins the music world in celebrating the life of outstanding pianist Alfred Brendel, who appeared the BSO and in recital at Tanglewood and Symphony Hall on numerous occasions over nearly 40 years, including a complete cycle of the Beethoven concertos with the BSO under Seiji Ozawa (at Tanglewood in 1992 and Symphony Hall in 2001) and several Mozart concertos led by James Levine. Known especially for his affinity for the Viennese Classical composers Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, he recorded complete cycles of the Beethoven concertos and sonatas and the Mozart concertos as well as music of Liszt, Prokofiev, and Schoenberg. He also recorded Beethoven’s cello sonatas with his son Adrian. Alfred Brendel published several collections of keenly observant and sometimes disarmingly open essays about music generally and his life as a performer, a legacy that complements his powerfully intelligent performances. Picture from Tanglewood in 1992
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For budget-minded Boomers attending college in the 1960s and early 1970s who wanted to learn the classical piano repertory (much less who might have been aspiring pianists or, ahem, reviewers), Alfred Brendel was the man, and his numerous recordings on Vox, Turnabout, and Vanguard eagerly consumed.
The death of this standard-setter, at 94, marks the last of that remarkable generation of pianists: Paul Badura-Skoda; Leon Fleisher; Glenn Gould; Friedrich Gulda, also a jazz pianist; Charles Rosen, with whom Brendel sparred in the New York Review of Books; our own Russell Sherman; and Maria Tipo. Brendel was arguably superior to all, if only in breadth of repertory for some. (This generation could be expanded to include the sea-changing conductors Claudio Abbado, the still-living Herbert Blomstedt, Pierre Boulez, Colin Davis, Thomas Dunn, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gustav Leonhardt, Carlos Kleiber, Charles Mackerras, Andre Previn, Gunther Schuller, and also the influential musicologist Michael Steinberg.)
I never heard Brendel play anything that I did not find interpretatively top-tier, or close. Like Rosen he was depreciated with the adjectives “cerebral” and “intellectual,” and some renditions were indeed more radiography than sweep, more shades of grays than nature’s colors (although his Liszt …). Critic Richard Dyer, who knew pianism, once wondered whether Brendel had picked at his food as a child, and one knew what he meant. But Brendel was the first musician I heard utter and repeatedly point to *rhythmic strength*, never an original notion among musicians and their teachers, but not often summarized in those two words, and for me the key to powerful musicmaking. by David Moran
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Jane Steinberg (also 94) recalls, “Alfred was antic. He collected typos and kept them in his wallet. Michael and I met him in maybe the 1960s on a trip to Puerto Rico, where Michael was attending some musical colloquy. He had asked to meet this rising star Alfred Brendel. So we were directed to a little tropical woods; in the stream there we saw a man atop an exposed rock holding a palm frond and moving from rock to rock — partly mere ceremony and partly sun god.”
The inimitable Norman Lebrecht published five sui generis writeups: HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.
I don’t remember the exact date of the first time I heard Brendel in concert, but it must have been in the early 1960s because I was still in my teens. He played at Hunter College– not in the big hall it used for its prestigious series but a smaller one. The audience was not small, however. Brendel had been making records for years — mostly for George Mendelssohn’s Budget-priced Vox label. I remember his program clearly. It consisted of Schubert’s posthumous C Minor Sonata, Liszt’s “Dante” sonata, and Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. Believe it or not, this was an unusual program — at least for those times. Pianists then studiously avoided the Hammerklavier and scarcely anyone programmed any of the big Schubert Sonatas, except, perhaps, for the posthumous B-flat, and performances of the Liszt piece were even more rare. This was, therefore, a courageous program — especially for a young pianist (Brendel was then in his early 30s), especially one who was making what was probably his New York debut. He played an encore — an unusually long one — that neither I nor any one else seemed to recognize. Someone in the row in front of me suggested Mozart. (It was, in fact, Mozart’s “Duport” Variations.)
So, Beethoven, Liszt, Schubert and Mozart — probably the four composers whom Brendel served best — then and forever after.
Comment by stephen wigler — June 20, 2025 at 12:07 pm
If you are a pianist and are around my age, then you too must have bought what I think is one of the greatest bargains of all time: Alfred Brendel’s recordings of the complete piano music of Beethoven on 21 LP records on the Murray Hill label, sold by Publishers’ Clearing House for $21.
Comment by Mark Lutton — June 18, 2025 at 7:49 pm