Latest news with #Austro-German
Spectator
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Alfred Brendel was peerless – but he wasn't universally loved
In middle age Alfred Brendel looked disconcertingly like Eric Morecambe – but, unlike the comedian in his legendary encounter with André Previn, he played all the right notes in the right order. OK, so perhaps I'm selling the maestro a bit short: I do think Brendel, who died on 17 June at the age of 94, was a peerless interpreter of the Austro-German repertoire, and for a time in the 1970s had a better claim than any other pianist to 'own' the Beethoven and late Schubert piano sonatas. But some of the media tributes have been embarrassingly uncritical, implying that Brendel was universally loved. He wasn't, and he didn't want to be. The Austrian maestro – born in Moravia, but then so was Mahler and no one thinks of him as Czech – lived in Hampstead for more than half a century. Even those who loved him found his cleverness intimidating. 'I don't think Alfred has ever had an unoriginal thought,' said his friend Isaiah Berlin. In the Guardian last week Simon Rattle described Brendel's 'occasional sharp edges' as 'deeply loveable'. To quote our late Queen, recollections may vary. A young pianist once found himself sitting next to the great man at a dinner. Brendel congratulated him on his debut album of German classical repertoire and asked him what he was working on now. He replied that he was planning a recital by a composer Brendel disliked. At which point the charm evaporated and the young man was ignored for the rest of the evening. Rattle also wrote that Brendel's humour was rooted in 'an almost surreal amusement at the world around him'. You can read that two ways, both valid. Brendel was exasperated by stupidity and waspishly funny about it. I remember a Wigmore Hall lecture in which he eviscerated 'historically informed' performers who, among other crimes, ended every phrase with a sighing diminuendo. His artfully chosen musical examples made them sound like pretentious morons. But that word 'surreal' is also crucial. This most professorial of performers, whose essay on 'Form and Psychology in Beethoven's Piano Sonatas' is a masterpiece of conventional analysis, was an unlikely authority on dada and kitsch. His thick horn-rimmed spectacles were focused on the little absurdities of life, some of which delighted rather than annoyed him. According to one of his friends, he collected passport photos abandoned in the slots of do-it-yourself booths because their subjects were so horrified by their boggle-eyed stares and wobbly jowls. Actually, Brendel himself famously pulled faces – sometimes deliberately, mugging for the camera, but more often unintentionally, as he produced a series of alarming grimaces in search of a perfect cantabile line. He recorded three cycles of the Beethoven sonatas. The first, from the early 1960s, is the snappiest and most secure but marred by Vox's lousy sound. The second is his analogue Philips cycle, which plumbs greater depths but adopts risk-averse tempi; the normally indulgent Penguin Guide said it rarely matched the authority of Brendel in the concert hall. That must have stung, for in his digital Philips cycle the pianist included live performances, including a Hammerklavier praised for its 'uncompromising impulse and coherence' but also damned for its dullness. The critics couldn't agree about Brendel's Beethoven or Schubert sonatas, though his Mozart concertos with Mackerras were generally acclaimed and nearly everyone loved his Haydn; here there was a spontaneity that hinted at the quirkiness of Brendel the raconteur and author of madcap poetry. But, to my ears, only one piece of music captured all the facets of his personality, and fittingly it was the piano masterpiece that he revered above all others – the Diabelli Variations. If there is such a thing as surreal Beethoven, it's found in these 33 excursions from Anton Diabelli's catchy but trivial waltz. Their vast range of emotions, wrote Brendel, ranged from the lyrical and depressive to the brilliantly extroverted, while 'at least eight of the variations laugh or giggle; some others take on an air of the grotesque, of diablerie – if the pun may be permitted'. To my mind, Brendel's live, white-hot 1976 Diabellis at the Festival Hall capture their moods with a dexterity unmatched by any other interpreter. This isn't to denigrate his other recordings. Listening again to his Beethoven and Schubert, I'm irritated by the carping of the critics; patches of overthinking don't detract from a sense of rightness, of channelling the composer. And how many pianists could write so penetratingly in German and English about literature, philosophy and the nooks and crannies of 20th-century culture – from the phonetic poetry of Kurt Schwitters to the cartoons of Gary Larson? It's an astonishing legacy from which, frustratingly, just one piece of the jigsaw is missing: those passport photos.
DW
17-05-2025
- Politics
- DW
Germany expands border patrols as part of immigration plan – DW – 05/17/2025
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt appeared at the Austro-German border to explain the government's new tougher border controls. The new government has made immigration policy a key part of its agenda. In the Bavarian town of Kiefersfelden, on the border with Austria in the foothills of the Alps, new Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt stood in the rain as he discussed the government's immigration policy. Dobrindt, of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), had stepped up border controls a week earlier. Germany's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party the CSU declared war on unauthorized immigration during the federal election campaign earlier this year, and now they want to deliver. Unlike in the past, asylum-seekers will also be turned back at the border. Only "vulnerable" individuals, such as pregnant women and children, will not be refused. For years, anyone who made it to Germany, by whatever means, and declared that they wanted to apply for asylum were allowed to enter the country while their application was processed. Now, things are different. When asked by DW what would now change in concrete terms, Dobrindt replied: "I want to say to all those who think they can make money from people's suffering by trying to smuggle people into another country that we are doing everything we can to stop these criminal activities." German police conduct expanded border checks To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The CSU politician added, almost proudly, that since the new coalition government of the CDU/CSU and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) under Chancellor Friedrich Merz took office in early May, 739 attempts to enter the country illegally had been thwarted by Thursday, an increase of 45% on the previous week. This was only possible, said Dobrindt, because an additional 3,000 federal police officers had been assigned to duty at the border, with the numbers up from 11,000 to 14,000. Reckoning with Merkel's open asylum policy Time and time again, Dobrindt has used the vocabulary of criminal people smugglers and illegal migration. The new crackdown on immigration is also a final reckoning with the policies of former Chancellor Angela Merkel. In 2015 and 2016 in particular, her government allowed many hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other African countries into the country and coined the phrase "We can do this!". In his government statement earlier this week, Merz emphasized almost reassuringly that Germany would remain a country of immigration. Speaking from the Austro-German border on Thursday, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (center) said more attention would now be paid to 'order' Image: Peter Kneffel/dpa/picture alliance But with regard to the police officers, Dobrindt put it in somewhat more complicated terms in Kiefersfelden, saying that officers would now ensure that in the "combination of humanity and order," more attention would now be paid to "order." To this end, more drones, more thermal imaging cameras and helicopters are now being used. During the election campaign, Merz promised that he would change the immigration policy on his first day in office. This is also certainly because of the electoral successes of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD). Merz immigration plans ruffling feathers of EU neighbors However, the new German tone on immigration is not going down well everywhere. Right at the start of his term of office, Merz learned during his visit to Polish President Donald Tusk in Warsaw that his eastern neighbor wants to combat illegal immigration on the EU's external borders, not the German-Polish border. Tusk told Merz directly that Poland would not take in any refugees from Germany. "The AfD, that's your problem, Mr. Chancellor," Tusk added. To which Merz replied: "We want to continue to develop European immigration and asylum policy together and we will also carry out border controls in a way that is acceptable to our neighbors." During the election campaign, Merz announced that he wanted to limit the number of refugees to 100,000 people per year. Last year, 229,751 people applied for asylum in Germany for the first time — significantly fewer than in 2015, when around 1 million people came to Germany. But still, that's almost two and a half times as many as Merz would like in future. This article was originally written in German. While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing.
DW
17-05-2025
- Politics
- DW
Germany cracks down on immigration at border – DW – 05/17/2025
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt appeared at the Austro-German border to explain the government's new tougher border controls. The new government has made immigration policy a key part of its agenda. In the Bavarian town of Kiefersfelden, on the border with Austria in the foothills of the Alps, new Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt stood in the rain as he discussed the government's immigration policy. Dobrindt, of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), had stepped up the border controls a week earlier. Germany's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party the CSU declared war on illegal immigration during the federal election campaign earlier this year, and now they want to deliver. Unlike in the past, asylum-seekers will also be turned back at the border. Only "vulnerable" individuals, such as pregnant women and children, will not be refused. For years, anyone who made it to Germany, by whatever means, and declared that they wanted to apply for asylum were allowed to enter the country while their application was processed. Now, things are different. When asked by DW what would now change in concrete terms, Dobrindt replied: "I want to say to all those who think they can make money from people's suffering by trying to smuggle people into another country that we are doing everything we can to stop these criminal activities." German police conduct expanded border checks To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The CSU politician added, almost proudly, that since the new coalition government of the CDU/CSU and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) under Chancellor Friedrich Merz took office in early May, 739 attempts to enter the country illegally had been thwarted by Thursday, an increase of 45% on the previous week. This was only possible, said Dobrindt, because an additional 3,000 federal police officers had been assigned to duty at the border, with the numbers up from 11,000 to 14,000. Reckoning with Merkel's open asylum policy Time and time again, Dobrindt has used the vocabulary of criminal people smugglers and illegal migration. The new crackdown on immigration is also a final reckoning with the policies of former Chancellor Angela Merkel. In 2015 and 2016 in particular, her government allowed many hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other African countries into the country and coined the phrase "We can do this!". In his government statement earlier this week, Merz emphasized almost reassuringly that Germany would remain a country of immigration. Speaking from the Austro-German border on Thursday, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (center) said more attention would now be paid to 'order' Image: Peter Kneffel/dpa/picture alliance But with regard to the police officers, Dobrindt put it in somewhat more complicated terms in Kiefersfelden, saying that officers would now ensure that in the "combination of humanity and order," more attention would now be paid to "order." To this end, more drones, more thermal imaging cameras and helicopters are now being used. During the election campaign, Merz promised that he would change the immigration policy on his first day in office. This is also certainly because of the electoral successes of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD). Merz immigration plans ruffling feathers of EU neighbors However, the new German tone on immigration is not going down well everywhere. Right at the start of his term of office, Merz learned during his visit to Polish President Donald Tusk in Warsaw that his eastern neighbor wants to combat illegal immigration on the EU's external borders, not the German-Polish border. Tusk told Merz directly that Poland would not take in any refugees from Germany. "The AfD, that's your problem, Mr. Chancellor," Tusk added. To which Merz replied: "We want to continue to develop European immigration and asylum policy together and we will also carry out border controls in a way that is acceptable to our neighbors." During the election campaign, Merz announced that he wanted to limit the number of refugees to 100,000 people per year. Last year, 229,751 people applied for asylum in Germany for the first time — significantly fewer than in 2015, when around 1 million people came to Germany. But still, that's almost two and a half times as many as Merz would like in future. This article was originally written in German. While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing.
