‘It is impossible to recall him without smiling': Simon Rattle on Alfred Brendel

The Guardian

4 hours ago

It's hard even to know where to start with Alfred: for any musician of my generation he was simply always there, the very definition of integrity and a kind of unique probing humour.
I heard him first in Liverpool, playing Mozart's Piano Concerto No 22, K482, an unforgettable concert for an impressionable 14-year-old. I could never have imagined then that my first collaboration with him would be in the same city when I was 20. That Beethoven – his first piano concerto – began a long journey of learning and friendship over the subsequent decades. I cannot stress how much I learned from him, or how painfully obvious it was to me just how steep the climb was to be able to come anywhere near to being an adequate partner for him. I remember clearly the sense of being kindly but firmly stretched to beyond my level of musicianship. Immense freedom within a strict framework. I am profoundly grateful that he was willing to carry on pulling me upwards for nearly 40 years!
I visited him often in his Hampstead home. I met his friend Isaiah Berlin there, terrifying enough on its own, and he said to me, 'you know, I don't think Alfred has ever had an unoriginal thought'. An astonishing but probably accurate observation from an intelligence that could recognise its equal.
But often it was just the two of us, listening and discussing. He was happy to listen to interpretations I brought, as he was with surely countless other musicians, and my scores are full of his insights and recommendations. In the middle of one of my evidently lugubrious accounts of the Eroica symphony's funeral march, I noted his devastatingly honest comment 'Simon, have you never considered that there might be such a thing as active grief?'
But often it was his wisdom about how to turn harmonic corners more eloquently. Difficult to achieve but vital for the music. Plus generous, challenging encouragement.
Contemporary art, one of his quiet passions, politics, literature were also there in the mix. But it is his humour, an almost surreal amusement at the world around him, that remains the strongest memory, and the reason it is impossible to recall him without smiling, even in this time of sadness.
The Alfred who, as a young man performing in Vienna, brought a tortoise on stage with him to walk around the concert hall floor, 'just because I like funny things.'
This friendly devil would sometimes make an appearance.
He loathed piped music: I remember him in one Birmingham restaurant spying a thin wire leading to what seemed to be an unstoppable sound system.
'I have just the thing' he said, producing a small pair of scissors from his jacket pocket. Seeing our astonishment as he quickly snipped through the wire, he said. 'Don't worry, they won't even notice until tomorrow and it may be weeks before they discover the wire!'
As ever, unique and unexpected. And even the occasional sharp edges deeply lovable. What a privilege to have had him in our lives.