Alfred Brendel KBE (born 5 January 1931) is an Austrian classical pianist, poet, author, composer and lecturer who is known particularly for his performances of Mozart, Schubert, Schoenberg, and Beethoven.
Alfred Brendel KBE (born 5 January 1931) is an Austrian classical pianist, poet, author, composer and lecturer who is known particularly for his performances of Mozart, Schubert, Schoenberg, and Beethoven.
Brendel was born in Wiesenberg, Czechoslovakia (now Loučná nad Desnou, Czech Republic) to a non-musical family. They moved to Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), when Brendel was three years dated and there he began at the age of six piano lessons subsequently Sofija Deželić. He innovative moved to Graz, Austria, where he studied piano later Ludovica von Kaan at the Graz Conservatory and composition in imitation of Artur Michel. Towards the fade away of World War II, the 14-year-old Brendel was sent help to Yugoslavia to dig trenches.
After the war, Brendel composed music as competently as continued to bill the piano, to write and to paint. However, he never had more formal piano lessons and, although he attended master classes afterward Edwin Fischer and Eduard Steuermann, he was largely self-taught after the age of 16.
Brendel gave his first public recital in Graz at the age of 17. He called it “The Fugue in Piano Literature”, and as well as fugal works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms and Franz Liszt, it included a sonata of Brendel’s own composition. In 1949 he won fourth prize in the Ferruccio Busoni Piano Competition in Bolzano, Italy. He after that toured throughout Europe and Latin America, slowly building his career and participating in a few masterclasses of Paul Baumgartner, Eduard Steuermann and Edwin Fischer.
At the age of 21, in 1952, he made his first solo recording, Franz Liszt’s Weihnachtsbaum, the work’s world premiere recording. His first concerto recording, Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 5 had been made a couple of years earlier. He went upon to make a string of further records, including three unqualified sets of the Beethoven piano sonatas (one upon Vox Records and two upon Philips Records). He was the first artist to wedding album the unmovable solo piano works of Beethoven. He has plus recorded works by Liszt, Brahms (including Brahms’ concertos), Robert Schumann and particularly Franz Schubert. An important buildup of Alfred Brendel is the unqualified Mozart piano concertos recorded next Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, which is included in the Philips 180 CD unquestionable Mozart Edition. He has recorded or performed Tiny of the music of Frédéric Chopin, but not because of any want of devotion for the composer. He considers Chopin’s Preludes “the most glorious attainment in piano music after Beethoven and Schubert”.
Brendel recorded extensively for the Vox label, providing them his first of three sets of the firm Beethoven sonatas. His breakthrough came after a recital of Beethoven at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the daylight after which three major tape labels called his agent. Around this grow old he moved to Hampstead, London, where he nevertheless resides. Since the 1970s, Brendel has recorded for Philips Classics Records. Brendel completed many tours in Europe, the United States, South America, Japan and Australia. He had a particularly near association considering the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, but played regularly with anything major orchestras in the US and elsewhere. Brendel has performed many cycles of the Beethoven Sonatas and Concertos, and was one of the few pianists who, in sophisticated years, could continue to occupy large halls. He is isolated the third pianist (after Emil von Sauer and Wilhelm Backhaus) to have been awarded honorary association of the Vienna Philharmonic, and he was awarded the Hans von Bülow Medal by the Berlin Philharmonic.
Reviewing his 1993 Beethoven: The Late Piano Sonatas (Philips Duo 438374), Damian Thompson of The Daily Telegraph described it as “a more magisterial approach … sprinkled afterward touches of Brendel’s strange, quirky humour,” while Robert Cummings at classical.net said, “There have been many fine pianists who have recorded the Beethoven sonatas behind acclaim, including Richard Goode .. Vladimir Ashkenazy, and the justly praised Artur Schnabel. Brendel unquestionably takes his place along with the greatest Beethoven interpreters of any time, and this disc finds him at his most inspiring.”
In April 2007 Brendel was one of the initial signatories of the “Appeal for the Establishment of a Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations”.
In 2009 Brendel was featured in the award-winning German-Austrian documentary Pianomania, about a Steinway & Sons piano tuner, which was directed by Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis. The film premiered theatrically in North America, where it was met with Definite reviews by The New York Times, as without difficulty as in Asia and throughout Europe, and is a share of the Goethe-Institut catalogue.