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“If I belong to a tradition, it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what he should do and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed.” – Alfred Brendel
Alfred Brendel’s place among the greatest musicians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is assured. Renowned for his masterly interpretations of the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Schumann and Liszt, he is one of the indisputable authorities in musical life today.
During the 1960s, he became the first pianist ever to record the entire piano works of Beethoven (on the Vox label), a set which, in the opinion of one critic, still contains “some of the finest Beethoven ever recorded”. In the 1970s, Brendel returned to Beethoven with a complete cycle of the piano sonatas on the Philips label for which he has recorded exclusively since 1969. Brendel’s discography is now among the most extensive of any pianist, reflecting a repertoire of solo, chamber and orchestral works by the major composers from the central European tradition from Bach through to Schoenberg.
Among the countless prizes he has won (sometimes on more than one occasion) are the Grand Prix of the Liszt Society, the Gramophone Award, Grand Prix du Disque, the Japan Record Academy Award, the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis, the Grand Prix de l’Academie du Disque Français, the Edison Prize and the British Music Trades Association Prize to name but a few. Important musical awards include the Léonie Sonning Prize, the Siemens Prize, the Prix Venezia, and in 2009 the Praemium Imperiale. – via alfredbrendel.com
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Mozart ~ Piano Sonata No 14 in C minor ~ K 457 ~ Alfred Brendel
Photo credit – By Sonja Ebner-Kohn – Scan of a print of the original photo authorized by the author, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org
Dispatches from the Asylum 