BRENDEL @ NINETY-FOUR
Ateş Orga
‘I was not a child prodigy or eastern European or Jewish as far as I know. I’m not a good sight reader, I don’t have a phenomenal memory and I didn’t come from a musical family, an artistic family or an intellectual family. I had loving parents, but I had to find things out for myself’
Apprentice to Artist
From the Desná Valley of the Jeseníky Mountains, Northern Moravia, Alfred Brendel was born in the German-speaking village of Wiesenberg (Vízmberk; Loučná nad Desnou), 5 January 1931, his family a mixture of Austrian/German/Italian/Slavonic stock. Aged three, he moved to Yugoslavia where his father, an architectural engineer and businessman, ‘the optimist of the family,’ worked at various jobs, including managing an hotel on the Croatian island of Krk (Veglia) in the northern Adriatic and running a cinema in Zabreb. In 1937 he started ‘social’ piano lessons with Sofia Deželić. Subsequently, in industrial Graz, he went to the Conservatory (1943-47), working with Ludovika von Kaan (former pupil of the Liszt disciple Bernhard Stavenhagen) – witnessing a visit by Hitler (‘my first impression of mass hysteria. I saw the eyes of the believers and it inoculated me against belief of all kinds’) … getting called-up at fourteen to dig trenches in Yugoslavia (only frostbite on a slow train saving him the ordeal) … surviving intensive Allied bombing … and experiencing the surrender of the city to the Red Army. ‘I have been made immune to blind faith by the years I spent under the Nazi regime. In the slave mentality of that era, not only words like “faith” and “fatherland”, but also the word “fidelity” suffered shameful abuse’ (1976). In 1947, at sixteen, he took the State Teachers’ Examination in Vienna. Aside from sparodic lessons with Paul Baumgartner, and masterclasses from Edward Steuermann (sometime student of Busoni and Schoenberg) and, especially, Edwin Fischer (through Martin Krause, Arrau’s teacher, another Liszt descendent), this flagged the end of his formal training. Henceforth he taught himself, taped his playing, and contemplated the art and example of others, specifically those ‘individualists [who] were not the kind of flamboyant musician who thinks he is god and the composer is his servant’ (Cortot, Kempff, Rubinstein, Schnabel, Furtwängler – ‘the performing musician who, more than any other, provided me with the criteria for judging a performance’ (1979) – Klemperer, Toscanini, Walter), turning an unconventional situation, and the freedom it gave (‘not being hindered or damaged by teachers’), to lifelong advantage. Cortot and company he’s described as ‘well-rounded musicians, not just piano virtuosos; some were also chamber musicians, some of them conducted. They were masters of piano sound as I see it, they could orchestrate on the piano. They respected the composers and didn’t place themselves first, but they were anything but boring and not mere carbon copies of the music’ (Lucie Renaud, ‘Alfred Brendel – a Musical Paradox’, Montréal La Scena Musicale, 1 March 2001).
He gave his début recital in the Kammermusiksaal, Graz, 26 April 1948, a ‘strange and very complicated’ programme, ‘The Fugue in Piano Literature’, including works by Bach, Brahms and Liszt plus ‘a Sonata of my own with a double-fugue, of course. At that time I composed polyphonic pieces with great pleasure, and a habit to listen to all voices implied in a composition has stayed with me.’ Nearby a one-man exhibition of watercolours [at art college he’d done ‘ portraits, imaginary cityscapes, a series of fantastical pictures called ‘masks’”] offered another visiting-card of his talents. ‘It was only when I was about seventeen or eighteen that I decided to make piano playing my profession. Until then I had been doing all kinds of things at the same time […] I composed [Artur Michl, local organist, composer and town worthy having taught him privately], I painted, I read avidly and, of course, wrote poetry; so there were a number of roads which seemed open for a little while’ (Elyse Mach, Great Pianists Speak for Themselves, London 1981). Finally settling on the piano, he ventured briefly down the competition circuit, crossing the Tirol from Styria to Austro/Latin Bolzano to take a fourth prize ahead of Béla Siki in the inaugural Busoni Competition (no first being awarded).
‘When I was young my overall career wasn’t sensational at all, it rather progressed step by step. But then, one day I was performing a Beethoven programme in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. It was quite an unpopular programme, I didn’t even like it much myself and the next day I got three offers from record companies. It seemed really rather grotesque, like a slow hardly noticeable rise on a thermometer or a kettle warming water suddenly beginning to boil and to bubble and the steam comes out.’ Following his formative, self-labelled ‘period of genius,’ the ’50s were mostly unspectacular. Others played faster … looked better … took the glamour prizes … and won the big recording contracts. On the one hand, Brendel worried that his career ‘was so slow and gradual’ that something had to be ‘wrong’ with him, or else with ‘almost everybody else in the profession’. On the other, acknowledged that matters were at least partly of his own making and deliberation. ‘I did not expect to be famous the day after tomorrow. I found having a talent was a long-range proposition. When I was 20 I wanted to achieve certain things by the time I was 50, not by 25. I was not without ambition, but it was not a burning, self-destructive ambition. I thought about the works to which one should do justice’ (Nicholas Wroe, ‘Keeper of the flame,’ London Guardian, 5 October 2002).
Coinciding with his first marriage (to Iris Heymann-Gonzala, an Argentinian), the ’60s, initially ‘slightly stagnant’ (‘I didn’t get too many important engagements’), gradually saw changes for the better. Annual masterclasses at the Vienna Festival (1960-70). A Beethoven sonata cycle, his first, at the Wigmore Hall (1962). Début North American tour, and concerts in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan (1963). Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin with Hermann Prey (1964). Editing a volume of Beethoven for the Wiener Urtext Ausgabe (1968). And, in Britain, growing and informed BBC support – from William Glock (a one-time Schnabel pupil in 1930s Berlin), Hans Keller and Stephen Plaistow – landing two Proms at the Royal Albert Hall (2, 12 September 1968) playing Beethoven’s Second and Brahms’s First Concertos (RPO/Groves, New Philharmonia/Schmidt-Isserstedt respectively).
By the time he married his second wife, Irene Semler, in 1975, having moved to London from Vienna (‘one of the reasons I like London is that the English have very little talent for fanaticism’), he’d entered the super-league. Signing to Philips, a major whose other house-pianist was Arrau, not only gilded Brendel’s station and status but afforded him the rare luxury to re-visit, re-think, re-verbalise, re-sound and re-paint whatever he wanted to. With the finest conductors and orchestras. In the best venues and ambiences. In his own time. And not just once. Olympus ascended, the Rubicon crossed, the world was his for the asking.
The last of Brendel’s thirty-three Prom appearances was in 2004 (Beethoven’s Emperor, Philharmonia/von Dohnányi, encore: Schubert E flat minor Klavierstück). 17 August. His stage farewell came four years later in the Golden Hall of Vienna’s Musikverein (Mozart’s Jeunehomme, Wiener Philharmoniker/Mackerras, two encores [omitted from Decca’s commemorative CD compilation, 478 2116]:Bach-Busoni Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, Liszt Au lac de Wallenstadt). 18 December – https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/dec/19/alfred-brendel-vienna (Alan Rusbridger, 19 December 2008); https://www.classicalsource.com/cd/alfred-brendel-the-farewell-concerts (Colin Anderson, December 2009).
Brendeliana
Aphorisms
1 ‘Feelings must remain the Alpha and the Omega of a musician.’ 2 ‘I urge every young pianist to take composition lessons and try composition. To learn how a piece hangs together gives you a different perspective.’ 3 ‘One has to find out why a work is different and unique, much rather than why it is similar to other pieces.’ 4 ‘In a piece there are hundreds of possible nuances which are all different. You not only have to store them all, but then you must be able to produce them, and then make the right use of them within your own concept.’ 5 ‘Music dictates the terms.’ 6 ‘The notion, the meaning, of kitsch has interested me for a very long time. It helps us to realize what art is.’ 7 ‘What is piano playing of genius? Playing which is at once correct and bold. Its correctness tells us that is how it has to be. Its boldness presents us with a surprising and overwhelming realisation: what we had thought impossible becomes true.’ 8 ‘I am responsible to the composer and particularly to the piece.’ 9 ‘I have never considered myself to be merely the passive recipient of the composer’s commands, preferring to promote his cause of my own free will and in my own way.’ 10 ‘Details are not just details. They alter the physiognomy of the whole.’ 11 ‘To put a great composer in a pigeonhole means to do him an injustice.’ 12 ‘It is important to spend time thinking and studying music away from the piano.’ 13 ‘A work of art [order] and life itself [chaos] are diametrically opposed; they do not necessarily mirror each other. Consequently there are artists in whom you would not recognise the man and some men in whom you would not recognise the artist.’ 14 ‘For most people ambiguity holds little attraction – what they look out for is hardly something which will disturb them by enlarging their view of life, but something which will reassure them by simplifying it.’ 15 ‘Put life into the music without doing damage to it.’ 16 ‘I have learned more about [sonority, tempo, ensemble] from singers and conductors than from other pianists.’ 17 ‘I try to be as fresh and as naïve as possible every time I return to a piece. I am not prepared to be satisfied with anything.’ 18 ‘If you get the energy of the small units right, the tempo does not have to be especially fast.’ 19 ‘Tempo modifications are merciless indicators of musical weakness.’ 20 ‘The aim is to be freer and yet more accurate. The accuracy means that the details count as much as the whole’ 21 ‘It is only the continuous renewal of [an artist’s] vision – either in the form of evolution or of rediscovery – that can keep his music-making young.’ 22 ‘My relations with the metronome are on the cool side.’ 23 ‘We follow rules in order to make the exceptions more impressive.’
[Alfred Brendel ©]
In Conversation
London January 1977
A wet winter afternoon in Hampstead. AB is in the middle of another Beethoven cycle sonata cycle [London, Munich, Stuttgart]. He’s at first rather stiff and unrelaxed, but gradually grows more voluble while still sheltering behind a faintly amused, slightly worried, quizzical front. His neat if austere studio, facing a secluded fragment of rain-soaked garden, houses two concert-grands – a Steinway and Bösendorfer. Shelves of scores and books confirm his wide interests. Strange, oppressive tribal masks, his ‘critics’ as he calls them, guard the pianos and sightlessly oversee proceedings. Upstairs, the drawing-room, almost as sparse, offers the prospect of a stuffed dummy cat propped up against the sofa. The atmosphere all seems curiously disembodied. Our meeting ranges over many topics. Periodically, with boyish enthusiasm, he illustrates a point at the Bösendorfer, casually demonstrating his stretch of a twelfth. Likewise his ability to play locked-scales in tenths as others might thirds or sixths. Suddenly, needing to resume practice, wanting to retreat back into his insular shell, silence descends. That Brendel spends more time at the keyboard than in the company of people is something his family doesn’t question.
‘It is not quite true to say I am an intellectual pianist. That I become aware of things while I play would be more correct. I’ve never tried to approach a piece through analysis first. I agree with Schnabel that analysis should be an outcome, not an inquest. The more I play the Beethoven sonatas the more I become aware of how the music is composed and constructed – which does not in the least put me into a straight-jacket. Accordingly there is a lot of variety from one performance to another. I have always had an awareness of structure but more in terms of vision than intellectual grasp.
‘Ornamentation depends very much on the piece. If a theme is extremely simple and stark, bare, I think one is allowed to add something so long as it is very discreet and does not change the general atmosphere. I’d be extremely surprised if Mozart, for instance, wouldn’t have added something in such a situation. When it comes to the text, I’m really the first to observe the letter whenever it makes sense, but, in the case again of Mozart, it’s an inferiority complex on the part of some performers who think that they’re unable to fill in certain things in a way that will do justice [stylistically] to the rest of the piece. It’s really not that difficult, and to add something is always less offensive than to leave a passage bare – at least to my taste. One example might be the slow movement of [the A major Concerto] K 488. An elaborated version of this was in Mozart’s possession when he died, probably the work of one of his pupils. The Neue Ausgabe has printed it [Critical Report 1964] and it is more elaborate than people nowadays would dare to do. I have done my own elaborations in this particular movement – though I must say that it does sound very beautiful as it is.
‘Regarding cadenzas it is necessary to write your own when none is given rather than play someone else’s. In [the D minor] K 466 [1785], for instance, Beethoven’s cadenza [c 1802-05/1808-09] is too much removed from the style and is totally outside the requirements of Mozart’s own cadenzas. Mozart wrote so many cadenzas that we can see what he wanted a cadenza to be like. They don’t leave the tonality seriously, they are simply an extension of the 6/4 chord [5/3 resolution]. Beethoven’s cadenzas, on the other hand, go as far away as possible at the first opportunity. They are not a relaxation of tension as in Mozart. Some cadenzas in Beethoven in fact border on the self-destructive in that they do not consider even the basic character of the work (like the second to [first movement of] the G major Concerto). If I have enough time I’m going to write something one day about Beethoven’s cadenzas, because it’s really interesting to observe those instances where Beethoven nearly stops being an architect. He had a revolutionary concept of the cadenza.
‘Edwin Fischer influenced me a lot, of course, as I was not only in his classes but also knew him personally. I was hardly less impressed by his personality. I never had a personal relationship with Furtwängler (I was too young) but I played with him and he has remained a very important influence. Then there was Cortot, but I only heard him: I did not speak French and I didn’t try to study with him. Then also Lotte Lenya and Adolf Busch, especially in his quartet recordings of the early ’30s. They showed me things about Beethoven I did not find anywhere else: for instance, fidelity to the letter carried further than most people would have ever dared and yet making more sense than most other performances of these pieces. They have shown how precise Beethoven often was in his notation. They showed me what dolce and pianissimo mean, what espressivo means. They told me a lot about rhythm and tempo, that a very fast tempo in some movements does make sense and is necessary if it can be controlled. I am not afraid to try and copy something if I think it does the performance justice. I think I was always sure of myself on this point, as I knew that I would sooner or later integrate an influence into my performance, and I would only use it if it made sense to me within the whole thing.
‘There were two instances where I really modelled my performances on others. Once as a young man I was asked to play the Rachmaninov C minor Concerto. I did not particularly love the piece but I thought it would be interesting to hear Rachmaninov’s own recording [April 1929, Philadelphia/Stokowski] and see what could be done, what the composer did, how he achieved it – this was my way to come as close as possible to the piece since I did not have my own conviction to offer. It was very interesting. The other time was Edwin Fischer’s performance of the Schubert Impromptus [Abbey Road, March 1938] which I still, to a large degree, prefer to any others. My first recording of them [Vienna, May 1963] was notably influenced by Fischer’s playing. But then later, of course, these influences do not remain solely superior. Occasionally I find out totally different things. It is sometimes an act of liberation to get rid of these models even if they are marvellous.
‘My interest in 19th century music is only in so far as it widens horizons and makes the really important people stand out even more clearly. Some of d’Albert’s music is very interesting. Smetana, too, was an extremely good composer. Dvořák did not have a feeling for the piano. There was a time when I would have learned the Tchaikovsky B flat minor Concerto with pleasure if a conductor had asked me. But the opportunity never occurred and now it’s too late, I’m afraid. I don’t need this music any more. I really don’t want to sound patronising but I’ve lost contact with it. I’m fascinated by some of Weber’s music – the Konzertstück [taped Watford Town Hall, June 1979, LSO/Abbado] was the first piece I ever played with an orchestra.
‘Chopin did not come to me so easily as a very young player. I admire some of his music enormously but set very high standards as to how it should be played. I could not live up to these standards. One, too, must specialise to do Chopin justice. Now I cannot make up the lost time. Chopin is a composer who eats you up. You cannot play Chopin from the angles you would play any other composer. Cortot’s Chopin playing impressed me tremendously. Some of his recordings from the ’30s are simply too glorious for words. No performance of the Préludes can measure up to his [Abbey Road, 1933-34]. It was a mark of Cortot’s greatness that, with total conviction and security, he could place each Prélude in its own world, and you had no doubt about it after two notes, half a bar – you would know exactly where you were. It is there from the beginning – listen: he plays the set like a kaleidoscope, each piece leading into another. You shake the kaleidoscope and a new constellation appears. There are twenty-four worlds like this. The other thing is that Cortot’s playing had an enormous number of facets. I have not yet heard another pianist play with so much three-dimensional depth of sound. It was like a statue: you could go around it, you had the feeling of different distances of sound. Chopin now is seen increasingly as a classicist, and is taken much more literally.
‘I’ve always been very interested in Liszt’s music, something I’ve built up over the years. [In his art] the decay, the ruin of a piece was being presented, the ruin as an art-form, if I may say so, a mirror of old age. I think Liszt in his very best music was always tremendously sincere. He had higher moral standards than most other composers . . .
‘Technique and practice? To start with technique and gymnastics, and then understanding the music, is for me totally absurd. Technique is important, of course, but only as a service. I never practice technique by itself. I try to develop and solve problems with the help of the music: each musical incident tells you what to do physically.’
[Ateş Orga ©, International Music Guide 78, The Tantivy Press, London 1977, adapted]
Brendelesquery
1 What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? The antics of an ageing brain. 2 What is the trait you most deplore in others? Fanaticism, unreliability, pretence. 3 What is your favourite word? ‘Unbelief’. 4 What is your fancy dress costume of choice? Fallen angel. 5 Is it better to give or to receive? Best: both at once. 6 What is your guiltiest pleasure? Keeping smokers out of my house. 7 To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why? I did: to my first wife when we split up. 8 What or who is the greatest love of your life? Sense. Nonsense. 9 What does love feel like? There are 13 different kinds of love. Or maybe 27. 10 Who would you invite to your dream dinner party? Neither Liszt nor Busoni: both smoked. 11 Which words or phrases do you most over-use? Is it funny? 12 If you could go back in time, where would you go? To paradise, meeting Eve. 13 What keeps you awake at night? Emerging poems. 14 What is the most important lesson life has taught you? To mistrust grand ideas. To avoid self-delusion. 15 Tell us a secret. The piano sings.
[Rosanna Greenstreet, London Guardian, 22 March 2008 ©, abridged]