Alfred Brendel

Alfred Brendel was born on January 5, 1931, in Wiesenberg, North Moravia. He began piano lessons at the age of six, and his talent soon became apparent. From 1941, he received instruction in harmony, but the Second World War initially prevented him from dedicating himself further to music. Alfred Brendel's artistic career therefore only began around 1948 in Graz. There, he studied orchestral conducting and composition and gave his first concert at the age of seventeen. With diverse cultural interests, despite his music studies, he did not focus solely on the creation of sounds but also engaged with painting, literature, the fine arts, and delved into philosophical writings. His teachers Edwin Fischer, Paul Baumgartner, and Eduard Steuermann helped him achieve the necessary refinement, yet he took his time before joining the hustle and bustle of the concert circuit. A year after his debut, he emerged as a laureate of the Busoni Competition in Bolzano, and from that point on, he gradually built his international career. Brendel's art was nourished from the outset by the understanding of a polymath with a musical focus, and thus he effortlessly made a name for himself through the intellectually profound quality of his interpretations. In 1960, he performed for the first time with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival, and in the following years, he climbed the ladder of success step by step. Alfred Brendel successfully performed on stages worldwide during the sixties, then gave masterclasses in Vienna from 1969/70, and settled in London in 1970. From 1960, a first collection of complete recordings of Beethoven's piano works was created; a decade later, he recorded all Beethoven sonatas for Philips. Brendel's interpretations place particular emphasis on the balance of expressive means. Far from any superficial virtuosity, he seeks the core of the music in the compositions and creates extraordinarily intense and lasting versions, especially of the works of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert. And he developed an encyclopedic ambition in the execution of entire cycles. In 1982/83, for example, he toured with the complete cycle of the 32 Beethoven sonatas. Already in 1970, he had begun to record all of Mozart's piano concertos with Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields chamber orchestra. He also excelled as an interpreter of Liszt but consistently focused on German classical music. It is also fitting that Brendel preferred to record live to capture the character of the music beyond studio technology. In the nineties, he once again dedicated himself to Mozart for the great Philips Mozart Edition, as well as to Schubert's piano music, and between 1992 and 1996, to Beethoven again. In the following decade, he dedicated himself to the Romantic Lied repertoire, among others, with baritone Matthias Goerne. As one of the most significant pianists of his generation, Brendel was also honored with numerous awards and accolades. He received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Cologne, London, Oxford, Sussex, Warwick, and Yale. On May 14, 2004, he was awarded the Siemens Music Prize, endowed with 150,000 Euros, in Munich for his lifetime achievement in musical interpretation. In 2008, he received the Herbert von Karajan Music Prize, and in 2009, in addition to an honorary doctorate from the Franz Liszt University of Music in Weimar, the "Praemium Imperiale," considered the Nobel Prize of music. In the autumn and winter of 2008, Alfred Brendel bid farewell to the international concert scene with an extensive tour, but has since remained active as an author and lecturer, enhancing his presentations with his own musical examples. Among Brendel's most notable releases of the past decade are the recordings of Mozart sonatas ("K332, K333, K457, K540", 2001; "K281, K282, K576, Fantasia in C minor", 2005), the recordings with Mathias Goerne ("Winterreise", Schubert, 2004; "Schwanengesang", Schubert, 2005), "Alfred Brendel In Recital" (2007), "The Artist's Choice Collection" (2008), "The Farewell Concerts" (2009), "Alfred Brendel: Artist's Choice. His Personal Selection" (2011) and "Alfred Brendel – A Birthday Tribute" (2011). He also published his own poems in spoken word under the title "Alfred Brendel liest / Alfred Brendel liest Vol.2" (2008/10). 01/2011