Majestic, rigorous and sheer fun: the best of Alfred Brendel's recordings

The Guardian

11 hours ago

In the two decades before he retired from concert-performances in 2008 at the age of 77, Alfred Brendel was arguably the best known classical pianist in the world. Yet regard for his playing was never by any means universal; what his many admirers found as searching, considered and profound in his interpretations, others heard as colourless and lacking in spontaneity. But Brendel's lasting popularity is evidenced by his recorded legacy, which is certainly extensive enough for generations to come to make their own assessment of his stature. In a recording career that stretched well over half a century, he made more than 100 albums, which included three complete cycles of the Beethoven sonatas.
As his career burgeoned, Beethoven, and the other great composers of the Austro-German tradition - Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms - were increasingly the focus of Brendel's recital repertory, but a glance at a chronology of his recordings reveals how wide his musical interests really were. If it is Brendel's discs of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert that will be treasured above all, there is much else to be discovered among the myriad recordings he left us. The recordings that follow, therefore, are very much a personal choice; another day, it might be entirely different.
Busoni: Fantasia Contrappuntistica (1953)
Busoni was a composer who fascinated Brendel, but he recorded very little of the piano music, with the exception of this early performance of the Italian musician's most challenging solo work.
Mussorgsky, Balakirev and Stravinsky (1955)
A sampler from early in his career of some of the Russian repertoire with which Brendel was never associated later in his life.
Liszt: Opera Transcriptions (1958)
Liszt, especially the great B minor Sonata, remained part of Brendel's repertory for much of his career, but early on he spread his net much wider, as this collection shows.
Schumann: Works for oboe (1980)
Brendel recorded relatively little chamber music, but he did make some discs as an accompanist, including a Winterreise with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and this jewel-like collection in which he partnered the greatest oboist of the age, Heinz Holliger.
Mozart: The Piano Concertos (1980s)
The cycle of the Mozart piano concertos that Brendel recorded with Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields was one of landmark discs of the 1980s.
Haydn: 11 Sonatas (1986)
The essence of Brendel's Viennese style, utterly lacking in affectation and mannerisms.
Schubert: Piano Sonatas D958, 959 & 960 (1988)
Schubert's late sonatas always seem to bring the best out of Brendel, his intellectual rigour, his sense of lyricism and sometimes sheer fun.
Brahms: Piano Concerto No 1 (1987)
In later years especially, Brendel did not play much of Brahms's solo piano music, but he performed the concertos, as this magnificent account of the First, with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic shows.
Beethoven Piano Concerto No 5 (1988)
A majestic, live performance of the Emperor Concerto, with Kurt Masur conducting.
Beethoven: Diabelli Variations (1990)
As masterly as all his Beethoven performances were, it often seemed as if the Diabelli Variations brought the very best out of Brendel, with their quickfire changes of mood, moments of introspection and wicked humour.
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Opp 90, 101, 106,109, 110, 111 (1993)
A compilation from the second of Brendel's three Beethoven sonata cycles, released just as he was about to begin a third, digital cycle for Philips.
Schoenberg: Piano Concerto (1996)
After the early years Brendel played very little 20th-century music, but Schoenberg's concerto did remain part of his repertory; this recording, with Michael Gielen conducting, is one of at least two that he made.