Alfred Brendel

Alfred Brendel (5 January 1931 – 17 June 2025) was a Czech-born Austrian classical pianist, poet, author, composer and lecturer, based in London. He is noted for his performances of music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, and Franz Liszt. He made three recordings of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas and was the first pianist to record Beethoven's complete works for solo piano.

Life and career

Brendel was born in Vizmberk,Template:Efn Czechoslovakia (now Loučná nad Desnou, Czech Republic) on 5 January 1931 to a non-musical family.<ref name="Guardian">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="NCPR">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="musikheute">Template:Cite web</ref> They moved to Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia) when he was three years old and he began piano lessons there, with Sofija Deželić, at age six.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="WP">Template:Cite news</ref> The family later moved to Graz, Austria, following the father who worked as an architectural engineer, businessman, resort hotel manager and cinema director.<ref name="NCPR" /> He studied piano with Ludovica von Kaan at the Graz Conservatory and composition with Artur Michl.<ref name="Spiegel">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="kug">Template:Cite web</ref> Towards the end of World War II, the 14-year-old Brendel was sent back to Yugoslavia to dig trenches.<ref name="Judd">Template:Cite web</ref>

After the war, Brendel composed music as well as continuing to play the piano, to write and to paint; he never had more formal piano lessons and was largely self-taught after age 16.<ref name="WP" /><ref name=brendel>Template:Cite web</ref>

Aged 17, Brendel first performed publicly in Graz.<ref name="Gramophone" /><ref name="Grove" /> His programme, titled "The Fugue in Piano Literature," included fugal works by Bach, Brahms and Liszt, as well as a piano sonata he had composed,<ref name="Guardian" /><ref name=merson>Francis Merson, "Alfred Brendel: Notes on a Musical Life," Limelight, April 2016, p. 40</ref> featuring a double fugue.<ref name="Guardian" /> He also published writings and exhibited art.<ref name="Guardian" /> In 1949, he won fourth prize in the Ferruccio Busoni Piano Competition in Bolzano, Italy.<ref name="Guardian" /> Subsequent tours in Europe and Latin America began to establish his reputation, and he took master classes with Paul Baumgartner, Eduard Steuermann and Edwin Fischer.<ref name=brendel/>

Brendel's first recording was of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 5 in 1950. Two years later, he made the world premiere recording of Liszt's Weihnachtsbaum.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He went on to make other strings of recordings, including three complete sets of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas (one on Vox Records and two on Philips Records). He was the first performer to record Beethoven's complete solo piano works.<ref name="Guardian" /><ref name="Gramophone" />

Brendel's international breakthrough came after a recital of Beethoven at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London; the following day, three major record labels called his agent. In 1971 he moved to Hampstead, London, where he lived for the rest of his life.<ref name="Grove" />Template:Failed verification After the 1970s, Brendel recorded for Philips Classics Records.<ref name="Gramophone" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He recorded Mozart's piano concertos<ref name="Gramophone" /> with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields,<ref name="FAZ">Template:Cite news</ref> which is included in the 180-CD complete Mozart Edition.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He also recorded numerous works by Liszt, Brahms, Robert Schumann, and particularly Franz Schubert.<ref name="Gramophone" /><ref name=recordings>Template:Cite web</ref>

Brendel completed many tours in Europe, the United States, South America, Japan and Australia.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He had a particularly close association with both the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic; he is only the third pianist (after Emil von Sauer and Wilhelm Backhaus) to have been awarded honorary membership of the Vienna Philharmonic, and he was awarded the Hans von Bülow Medal by the Berlin Philharmonic.<ref name=merson/> He played regularly with all major orchestras in the US and elsewhere,<ref name="Wroe" /> performing many cycles of Beethoven's piano sonatas and concertos. He was one of few pianists able to fill large halls even in later years.<ref name="Wroe" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Brendel worked with younger pianists such as Paul Lewis,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Amandine Savary,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Till Fellner<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Kit Armstrong.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He also performed in concert and recorded with his son, the cellist Template:Ill<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and appeared in many Lieder recitals with singers including Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Matthias Goerne.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

In 2007 Brendel announced that he would retire from the concert platform after his concert of 18 December 2008 in Vienna,<ref name="Gramophone" /> which featured him as soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9; the orchestra (the Vienna Philharmonic) was conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras.<ref name=Guardianretirement>Template:Cite news</ref> His final concert in New York was at Carnegie Hall on 20 February 2008, with works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. Since his debut at Carnegie Hall on 21 January 1973, he performed there 81 times, including complete cycles of Beethoven's piano sonatas in 1983.<ref>Carnegie Hall archive</ref>

In April 2007, Brendel was one of the initial signatories of the "Appeal for the Establishment of a Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations".<ref>"Featured Signatories" Template:Webarchive, Campaign for a UN Parliament, 2007. Retrieved 5 January 2011.</ref>

In 2009 Brendel was featured in the German-Austrian documentary Pianomania, about a Steinway & Sons piano tuner, directed by Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis.<ref name="Cibis">Template:Citation</ref> The film premiered theatrically in North America, where it was met with positive reviews by The New York Times.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Personal life

Brendel was married from 1960 to 1972 to Iris Heymann-Gonzala; they had a daughter, Doris, who became a progressive rock and pop rock musician. In 1975, Brendel married Irene Semler; they had three children, a son, Adrian, who became a cellist, and two daughters, Katharina and Sophie.<ref name="Wroe">Template:Cite news</ref> They lived in Hampstead, London.<ref name="Grove" />

Brendel died at his home in London on 17 June 2025, at the age of 94.<ref name="Guardian" /><ref name="Monde">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Gramophone">Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref name="Lewis">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Cammann">Template:Cite web</ref>

Work

Brendel performed series of the music of Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart and Liszt.<ref name="Grove">Template:Cite web</ref> He was particularly close to the works of Schubert, described by Gerald Felber from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as of "luminous warmth, vulnerable and sad, painfully transience-conscious and at the same time dreamlike" and "obsessed with beauty".<ref name="FAZ" /> Brendel performed and recorded little of the music of Frédéric Chopin, but not because of lack of admiration for the composer; considering his Preludes "the most glorious achievement in piano music after Beethoven and Schubert".<ref name=merson/> Brendel saw Liszt as a misunderstood composer, as exposed in an essay of the 1960s, "Der mißverstandene Liszt," and devoted performances and recordings to a discovery of Liszt as a serious composer, not without critically seeing weak points also.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Brendel played relatively few 20th-century works but did perform Schoenberg's Piano Concerto.

Harold C. Schonberg from the New York Times noted that some critics accused the pianist of "pedanticism".<ref>The Great Pianists from Mozart to the Present, Harold C. Schonberg, Simon & Schuster, Second Edition, 1987, Template:ISBN</ref> Brendel's playing was sometimes described as "cerebral,"<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and he said that he believed that the primary job of the pianist is to respect the composer's wishes without showing off himself, or adding his own spin on the music: "I am responsible to the composer, and particularly to the piece".<ref name="Wroe" /> Brendel cited, in addition to his mentor and teacher Edwin Fischer, pianists Alfred Cortot and Wilhelm Kempff, and the conductors Bruno Walter and Wilhelm Furtwängler as particular influences on his musical development.<ref name="Wroe2">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Furtwaengler">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Brendel2" />

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 with touches of Brendel's strange, quirky humour."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Recordings

• Alfred Brendel – Unpublished Live and Radio Performances 1968–2001
• Great Pianists of the 20th Century – Alfred Brendel III

Publications

Brendel was a prolific author. His writings have appeared in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, and other languages. For several years, he was a contributor to The New York Review of Books.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His own books include:

• 1976: Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts, essays, Robson Books<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• 1990: Music Sounded Out, essays including "Must Classical Music be Entirely Serious?", Farrar Straus Giroux<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• 1998: One Finger Too Many, poetry, Random House<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2001: Alfred Brendel on Music, collected essays, A Cappella<ref name="Brendel3">Template:Cite book</ref>
• 2003: Me, of All People: Alfred Brendel in Conversation with Martin Meyer (UK edition: The Veil of Order), Cornell University Press<ref name="Brendel2">Template:Cite book</ref>
• 2004, Cursing Bagels, poetry, Faber & Faber<ref name="Barron">Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2010: Playing the Human Game, collected poems, Phaidon Press<ref name="Brendel">Template:Cite book</ref>
• 2013: Template:Cite book

Awards and accolades

• Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE; 1989)<ref name="Fullbrook">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts (1991)<ref name="q943">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Hans von Bülow Medal of the Berlin Philharmonic (1992)<ref name="BerlinPhil">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Beethoven-Ring of the Vienna Music University (2001)<ref name="AustriaWiki">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="HMTM">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Léonie Sonning Music Prize (2002; Denmark)<ref name="Sonning">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Ernst von Siemens Music Prize (2004)<ref name="Siemens">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Prix Venenia: Premio Artur Rubinstein (2007)<ref name="HMTM" />
• Praemium Imperiale (2009)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite newsTemplate:Dead linkTemplate:Cbignore</ref>
• Herbert von Karajan Music Prize (2008)<ref name="HMTM" />
• Franz Liszt-Ehrenpreis (2011)<ref name="Deutschlandfunk">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Juilliard Medal (2011)<ref name="Thurman">Template:Cite magazine</ref>
• Voted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame (2012)<ref name="Hall of Fame">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Golden Mozart Medal of the Salzburg Mozarteum (2014)<ref name="Salzburg">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Echo Klassik Lifetime Achievement Award (2016)<ref name="Echo">Template:Cite web</ref>

Brendel was awarded honorary doctorates from universities including London (1978), Oxford (1983), Yale (1992), University College Dublin (2007),<ref>"History of Music at UCD 1914–2019" by Wolfgang Marx, UCD School of Music</ref> McGill Montreal (2011), Cambridge (2012) and York (2018) and held other honorary degrees from the Royal College of Music in London (1999), New England Conservatory (2009), University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar (2009) and the Juilliard School (2011). He was an honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford,<ref name="Guardian" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Wolfson College, Oxford, and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He received Lifetime Achievement Awards by Edison, International Classical Music Awards, and Deutscher Schallplattenpreis, among others.<ref name="Hall of Fame" /><ref name="Echo" />

In 2012, Limelight asked 100 pianists which other pianist inspired them the most. In addition to his student, Paul Lewis, Brendel was mentioned by three others.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was included in Peter Donohoe's "Fifty Great Pianists" series for BBC Radio 3, which aired in 2012.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Further reading

• Template:Cite book The Festschrift for Brendel contains contributions by, i.a., Imogen Cooper, Andreas Dorschel, Till Fellner, Peter Gülke, Florence Noiville and Sir Simon Rattle.
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External links

• Template:Official website
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• Alfred Brendel interview, 20 April 1991
• Alfred Brendel on Desert Island Discs. (BBC Radio 4, 2013)
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