“In music, the connection between intellect and emotion is uplifting and blissful.” (Alfred Brendel)
Every one of the last few days, when I wake up, it hits me: the world has lost so much without Alfred Brendel… He was one of the most important, influential pianists and musicians of all time. He was unique as a person and as an artist. He was one of the most genuinely kind, most generous, and the most (cleverly, sophisticatedly!) humorous person I have ever known.
By the time I was fortunate enough to play for Alfred, it was after I lost about 10 years of playing, due to a severe wrist injury. Though my hands were on the mend, the deep concerns about reoccurring injuries never departed from the back of my mind, and obviously affected my playing. Alfred was not only most encouraging during the 14 years we worked together, he was also exceedingly strict, always demanding that we serve the music best. From him I learned that the integrity and responsibility of an interpreter is of prime importance, from studying the scores thoroughly to truly understanding the music. Only then is one able to embark on the enormous task of working out the technique to fully and deeply express the music. Alfred taught me from my first lessons onwards never to take the easy way out—for example, merely playing faster or more muscularly with the hope of achieving more brilliant and dramatic characters, or just by using more rubato to hope to sound more expressive—these approaches were never acceptable to him! What does freedom truly mean in music? How does one convey it? One must never abandon rhythmical gestures and characters, but rather find within the tempi a rhetorical flexibility developed from characterization. Although every musical era has its performance practice, human emotions are equally deep regardless of time. How do we as classical musicians respect and balance the tradition of each period, with everything that we have learned from all the sources available, with the understanding and personal input as interpreters? How do we truly convey musical meaning while incorporating every single notation in the score into our interpretation? This is Alfred’s legacy as an artist and as a person: in both domains he possessed the highest integrity and honesty; nothing he did was perfunctory. Every note mattered.
Most often we worked on Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, and Bach, though we also worked on Chopin. Though Alfred never recorded the 24 Preludes Op. 28, he had tremendous affinity, deep fondness and strong perceptions and insights toward this work. Most of the general public is more familiar with Alfred’s performances and recordings of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, and Schoenberg. Notwithstanding his strongest affinity for these composers, his versality enabled him to interpret others’ works with equal artistic distinction at the highest level possible. For example, one of the notoriously difficult works is Stravinsky’s piano transcription of Three Movements from Petrushka; a more typical performance might be concerned with speed and brilliance in a superficial way. By contrast, Alfred’s brought out the work’s true dramatic sense, with all the details and characters expressed to their fullest. Through his playing, we understand how the piano can create the illusion of being instrumental, vocal, and symphonic. In hearing Alfred Brendel interpret Petrushka, one understands why there are times we prefer the piano version to the orchestral version,: at his or her best, a pianist can exceed any imagination.
There were times in lessons when Alfred insisted on my trying a passage repeatedly, 10, 15, 20 times… “The expressiveness is not deep enough”; “Now there is too much rubato just because you want to be more expressive!”; “Not enough details yet—but also, what about the structure, the direction and long phrasing?”; “Too fast, not deep enough;” Too slow now; even if the music expresses the saddest, deepest feelings, it still needs to flow!“; “Your fortissimo is not earthshattering!”; “Now you play fortissimo literally, in all voices, thus it’s too loud and out of balance!” Alfred sat down and demonstrated, playing the left hand with greatest of intensity and dramatic character, yet the quasi mezzo forte, and all of the chords spread out in both hands sounded indeed earthshattering, yet without a hint of aggressiveness and with such clarity and perfect balance, that I would never have guessed that he played the left-hand quasi mezzo forte.
He also had an uncanny ability to convey the connections between the sonorities he sought and the physical motion that would most effectively achieve them. For example, when I played off-beats with a more vertical touch, he showed how lifting the fingers from the keys could transform the timing and the tone to express an upbow character. I used to play as if downbeats were more important than off-beats, but he taught me to hear and play the off-beats with crucial characterization, which has given my playing more detail, direction, and intensity overall.
Alfred insisted on working out the minutest subtleties in scores until I could truly understand and feel through my heart and soul what we think the composer wishes us to communicate. I remember at the earlier times when we worked together, once I became so desperate after repeatedly trying to improve one passage, I could feel the steam coming out of my ears from frustration with myself. I think Alfred could see I was about to pull out my hair. Suddenly he giggled and said, “It’s time for a nice tea break,” which we took. Right after, we went back to the same passage!
I noticed soon after Alfred started working with me, how he opened an entirely different world for me, one that is infinitely richer and limitless… My desperation of searching turned from feeling insufficient to hunger and urgency that gave me the strength and the will to continue striving, while physically I became much more relaxed, daring to tackle technically more difficult and complex works, such as Liszt’s Tannhäuser, Norma, and Don Juan paraphrases. Soon after we worked on them, he presented me with an unsolicited recommendation letter, citing, among other things, my playing of these pieces. His encouragement and support gave me artistic strength that was of critical impetus to my further development. Soon after that, during a lesson, Alfred asked me whether I had ever played Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy. My eyes opened wide, and I said, “I’ve never dared.” Some days later, after I returned to Boston, I received in the mail a new score of the Fantasy that Alfred inscribed to me, and it is fully annotated in Alfred’s handwriting from page one to the end of the piece, containing his ideas, suggestions, and the way he hears and feels this piece. Yet in his typical most humble way, he suggested that I merely glance through his ideas, while stating that there was really no need to… I was frozen, holding the score in my hands, and I stared at it for the longest time in astonishment. I couldn’t hold back my tears of gratitude. Alfred’s generosity and commitment reminded me of that of Franz Liszt.
Alfred had an astonishingly wide-ranged knowledge in countless areas, I think due to his endless curiosity: reading the newspaper for extensive time every morning, always reading books of a wide variety and writing books, among other things.
Throughout the many long walks we had in Hampstead, going to museums, concerts, watching whimsical foreign films, listening to countless recordings together, my cherished mentor teacher didn’t only teach me music, but life. He taught me humanity, generosity, genuine kindness, and how to see things with artistic eyes; how to love and appreciate life, how there is no limit to how we can let life enrich our beings if we are forever curious and courageous.
When Alfred talked to me about possibly focusing solely on performing, when my wrists were completely healed, I told him how much I learn from the aspirations of being a teacher who could nurture pupils as best as I can, in addition to performing. Every minute that I took away from my dear teacher, every minute he used to help me, made me feel guilty, that someone of his caliber, instead of doing important things, things that were worthy of his time and effort, he took the time to nurture me and those of us who were most fortunate to be his pupils. He will forever inspire me to be the best person I can be, a musician and teacher who never stops searching and developing, who would like to contribute to society and art in however small ways, to the best of my ability.
What the music world has lost with Alfred Brendel’s passing is beyond words, but what he gave us, created and inspired, will last forever.