Latest news with #Brendel
Spectator
25-06-2025
- 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.
New Indian Express
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Alfred Brendel, pianist renowned for refined playing of Beethoven, dies at age 94
LONDON: Alfred Brendel, a pianist and poet renowned for his refined playing of Beethoven over a six-decade career, died Tuesday at his home in London. He was 94. Brendel's death was announced by the public relations agency Bolton & Quinn. Born in what is now the Czech Republic, Brendel gave his first recital in Graz, Austria, in 1948 at age 17. His final concert was with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Musikverein on Dec. 18, 2008. 'I grew up in a family that was not musically inclined, not artistically inclined and not intellectual, so I had to find out a lot of things for myself,' he said in a 2012 interview for the Verbier Festival. 'I was a young person who in the early 20s did not think I have to achieve something within five years but I thought I would like to be able to do certain things when I'm 50. And when I was 50 I said to myself I have actually done most of the things I want to do.' Brendel also was praised for his interpretations of Mozart, Schubert, Liszt and Haydn. He recorded the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas three times, and he played them over a month at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1983, among 77 recitals in 11 cities during the 1982-83 season. He repeated the sonatas again at Carnegie over three seasons in the 1990s. 'With winks to the audience and demonstrative hand movements, he has a playful manner that offsets his serious, contemplative interpretations,' The Associated Press wrote during the 1990s cycle. Born on Jan. 5, 1931, in Wiesenberg, northern Moravia, Brendel studied piano in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, with Sofia Dezelic and then at the Graz Conservatory with Ludovika von Kaan. He also took composition lessons with Artur Michl. His studies were interrupted when he and his mother fled as the Russian army invaded during World War II.
Gulf Today
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
World-famous pianist and author Alfred Brendel dies at 94
Self-taught pianist Alfred Brendel, who was widely regarded as one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, was himself baffled by his success on the world stage. 'I'm completely at a loss to explain why I made it,' the musician, who retired in December 2008 after a career spanning six decades, was quoted as saying in a documentary about his life and work. Brendel, who died on Tuesday aged 94 in London where he had lived for more than 50 years, had a reputation for being modest, self-effacing and intensely self-critical. He gave only short, quick bows when entering or leaving the stage of his always sell-out recitals. The Guardian said once he was never one 'for fireworks and histrionics'. But he was notoriously intolerant of unwanted noise during his concerts, and was even known to walk off stage if he felt disturbed by a loud hacking cough of an audience member. '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,' he once said. Nevertheless, Brendel — who began playing the piano at the age of six and had little formal training after the age of 16 — insisted that the artist shouldn't 'block (himself) out' when performing the core central European repertoire of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Liszt for which he was best known. While Britain's classical music scene likes to claim Brendel for itself — he lived in London since 1971 — he was an Austrian citizen, born January 5, 1931, in Wiesenberg in northern Moravia, now the Czech Republic, and he spent his childhood travelling throughout Yugoslavia and Austria. His father worked variously as an architectural engineer, businessman and resort hotel manager on the Adriatic island of Krk, where Brendel first encountered 'more elevated' music. 'I operated the record player which I wound up and put on the records for the guests of the hotel, which were operetta records of around 1930 sung by Jan Kiepura. And I sang along and found it to be rather easy.' Following World War II, the family moved to Graz in Austria, where Brendel studied at the city's conservatory. But after that, aside from attending a few masterclasses, he had no further teachers and came to regard his unconventional musical background as something of an advantage. 'A teacher can be too influential,' he said. 'Being self-taught, I learned to distrust anything I hadn't figured out myself.' He said that when learning a new piece, he tape-recorded himself and listened and reacted to what he heard. True to that adage, he did not teach formally, either, even if he coached some of the leading pianists of the younger generation, such as Till Fellner, Paul Lewis, Imogen Cooper and Kit Armstrong. When he retired from concert performances in Vienna in December 2008, he was asked what he would miss most. 'The adrenalin,' he said. And 'in spite of all those obnoxious coughers and the mobile telephones and hearing aids going off,' he would miss the public, too, Brendel said. Regarded by many as an intellectual artist — one specialist magazine dubbed him 'The Thinking Pianist's Man' — Brendel insisted his performances were not overly cerebral. 'I have never been somebody who analyses a piece and then plays it. I want to know the piece well and for it to tell me what it is about, and what is special about it.' According to the BBC, most critics acknowledged him as one of the top interpreters of the works of Beethoven. After his retirement, Brendel wrote books on music and humorous verse and also gave lectures, readings and seminars. He won numerous awards during his lifetime, including the Hans von Bulow Medal of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1992 and the Herbert von Karajan Music Prize in 2008, as well as a string of doctorates from the world's most prestigious universities. Agence France-Presse
Yomiuri Shimbun
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Alfred Brendel, Pianist Renowned for Refined Playing of Beethoven, Dies at Age 94
AP file photo Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel performs at the piano with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at the Lucerne Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland on Sept. 5, 2006. LONDON (AP) — Alfred Brendel, a pianist and poet renowned for his refined playing of Beethoven over a six-decade career, died Tuesday at his home in London. He was 94. Brendel's death was announced by the public relations agency Bolton & Quinn. Born in what is now the Czech Republic, Brendel gave his first recital in Graz, Austria, in 1948 at age 17. His final concert was with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Musikverein on Dec. 18, 2008. 'I grew up in a family that was not musically inclined, not artistically inclined and not intellectual, so I had to find out a lot of things for myself,' he said in a 2012 interview for the Verbier Festival. 'I was a young person who in the early 20s did not think I have to achieve something within five years but I thought I would like to be able to do certain things when I'm 50. And when I was 50 I said to myself I have actually done most of the things I want to do.' Brendel also was praised for his interpretations of Mozart, Schubert, Liszt and Haydn. He recorded the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas three times, and he played them over a month at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1983, among 77 recitals in 11 cities during the 1982-83 season. He repeated the sonatas again at Carnegie over three seasons in the 1990s. 'With winks to the audience and demonstrative hand movements, he has a playful manner that offsets his serious, contemplative interpretations,' The Associated Press wrote during the 1990s cycle. Born on Jan. 5, 1931, in Wiesenberg, northern Moravia, Brendel studied piano in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, with Sofia Dezelic and then at the Graz Conservatory with Ludovika von Kaan. He also took composition lessons with Artur Michl. His studies were interrupted when he and his mother fled as the Russian army invaded during World War II. 'When I turned 16, my piano teacher told me I should now continue on my own and give a first public recital,' he recalled during a lecture after his retirement. 'I should also audition for the great Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer, which I did the following year. Three of his masterclasses that I attended during the Lucerne festivals made an impact that lasts to this day. I also met Eduard Steuermann, the pupil of Busoni and Schoenberg. Apart from these encounters, I studied on my own.' Brendel had lived in London since 1971. He received 10 Grammy nominations without winning. He wrote several books, including a collection of poems called 'Cursing Bagels.' 'I used to live a double life,' he said in a 2012 interview with the Verbier Festival. 'I'm also a literary person lecturing, giving readings of my poems and teaching.'
Euronews
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Renowned pianist and writer Alfred Brendel dies aged 94
Alfred Brendel, a classical pianist and writer renowned for his refined playing of Beethoven and Schubert, died Tuesday at his home in London. He was 94. Born on 5 January 1931 in Moravia, now the Czech Republic, Brendel spent most of his childhood in Croatia and Austria. 'I grew up in a family that was not musically inclined, not artistically inclined and not intellectual, so I had to find out a lot of things for myself', he said in a 2012 interview for the Verbier Festival. As a child and teenager, he studied piano and composition but considered himself largely self-taught. 'I did attend master classes in Austria by Edwin Fischer and Eduard Steuermann, but I never had a regular teacher after the age of 16', he told the New York Times in 1981. 'Self-discovery is a slower process but a more natural one.' Brendel gave his first recital in Graz, Austria, in 1948 at age 17, marking the beginning of a six-decade career. Throughout his life, he became especially associated with the music of Beethoven. He recorded the composer's 32 piano sonatas three times, and he played them over a month at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1983. He repeated the sonatas again at Carnegie over three seasons in the 1990s. 'Working on Beethoven takes a lifetime; the more you study him, the more you play him, the more you discover other avenues to explore and try', he told Le Monde in 1999. He was also praised for his interpretations of Mozart, Schubert, Liszt and Haydn. He was widely regarded as a mentor and as the 'musicians' musician' by his colleagues. Brendel had lived in London since 1971. He received 10 Grammy nominations and 23 honorary degrees from universities including, Cambridge, Oxford, Yale and The Juilliard School. Brendel gave his final concert with the Vienna Philharmonic in December 2008. An amateur painter and poet in his early years, he devoted most of his retirement to writing and published several books, including a 2004 collection of poems called 'Cursing Bagels.' 'I used to live a double life', he said in a 2012 interview with the Verbier Festival. 'I'm also a literary person lecturing, giving readings of my poems and teaching.' Content warning: This article contains images which some readers may find offensive. If you're a music lover and enjoy a bit of drama, you must have heard that controversy is brewing over the artwork of Sabrina Carpenter's upcoming album 'Man's Best Friend'. The suggestive – but hardly sexually explicit - cover features the buzzy 'Espresso' hitmaker on her knees in front of a faceless man who is pulling her hair back. And the release of the image has caused much debate. Many argue that Carpenter's MO has always been pop-horniness, and that she has every right to express herself and her sexuality – in this case what some may perceive as a submissive kink - in any way she sees fit and crucially, without being policed or harassed; others see this image as degrading, regressive and promoting traditional gender roles. At the end of the day, it's her album cover and can't we just let her be? Some hyper-conservative and hyper-progressive corners of the internet clearly disagree, and the reactions have been intense – which is hardly surprising, considering sexuality has always rubbed some people up the wrong way. Plus, scandal is hardly new for musicians, as artists have sparked outrage with their album covers for decades, leading some to be censored or even banned. From nudity to the open courting of outrage via political statements (and sometimes, downright poor taste), here are 20 provocative covers that rocked the music world and faced the most backlash. We proceed chronologically. A post shared by Euronews Culture (@euronewsculture) While hardly controversial compared to some of the other covers in this list, that's a downright unfortunate title to go with this image. And isn't the one on the right an uncanny dead ringer for a young Stephen Fry? Unsettling. It's not one of the Fab Four's most famous albums, but certainly their most notorious. Photographer Robert Whitaker took a snap of the band in white butcher's coats, surrounded by raw meat and dismembered baby dolls. Paul McCartney claimed it was a comment against the Vietnam War. US retailers were shocked and refused to stock the album, leading to it being withdrawn and reissued with a more vanilla alternative. Today, the 'Butcher cover' is available in pirated form. Those lucky enough to own an original pressing have an expensive and coveted piece of music history. The cover for the avant-garde 'Two Virgins' captures John Lennon and Yoko Ono completely naked. It sparked outrage, leading distributors to clandestinely sell the album wrapped in brown paper bags. At the end of the 1960s, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker founded a supergroup with Steve Winwood and Ric Grech. They released only one album together, and to mark the occasion, they enlisted photographer Bob Seidemann. His image features a young topless girl holding a model spaceship. The image was considered deeply problematic and was promptly banned and replaced with a more classic shot of the band members. The Stones have had several album cover controversies over the years, including 'Beggar's Banquet''s artwork which featured a graffiti covered bathroom wall. However, it's the band's ninth studio album, designed by Andy Warhol, matched with its inuendo-heavy title, which rubbed censors up the wrong way. It features a suggestive denim-clad crotch and the original pressing of the LP also had a working fly which unzipped to reveal white underwear. The cover was famously banned in Spain, which was under the fascist rule of General Franco at the time. Photographer Eric Boman's shot of Constanze Karoli and Eveline Grunwald led many US outlets to censor the image, feeling uncomfortable with the sight of scantily clad models. Thankfully, most European distributors weren't irked by the sight of lingerie. There's misguided and then there's what was going on in the minds of German rockers Scorpions in 1976. The album titled 'Virgin Killer' depicts a naked 10-year-old girl with broken glass covering her genitalia. The controversy led to a bump in sales, but it remains to this day one of the most censored album covers in music history. NB: Euronews Culture has decided to blur the image since this album cover has been deemed by many as child pornography. Sex Pistols' only studio album caused plenty of pearl clutching when it was released in 1977. A record shop owner in Nottingham, UK, was arrested for displaying the records. This led to an obscenity-related court case, as he was charged for contravening the Indecent Advertisement Act 1889. The charges were eventually dropped. All because of the word 'bollocks'. All it took was a female-led punk outfit appearing topless and covered in mud for everyone to collectively lose their minds. Considering the sheer amount of topless men on album covers, the only words that come to mind are: deal with it. With an album title like that, it was pretty obvious that the (cheeky) cover image would cause some outrage. There are no words. It's one of the most famous album covers in the world but the artwork for Nirvana's grunge masterpiece proved divisive at the time of its release. It features a photo taken by Kirk Weddle of a four-month-old nude baby named Spencer Elden. Kurt Cobain refused for it to be censored, but did state that he would agree to a sticker covering the penis, reading: 'If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile.' It didn't come to that. However, several decades later, Elden attempted to sue Nirvana for violating US federal child pornography protections with the image, arguing that it resulted in 'lifelong damages'. The suit was eventually dismissed. Rap pioneer Ice Cube was no stranger to controversy, what with the headline-grabbing lyrics of N.W.A's 'Fuck Tha Police.' But with 'Death Certificate', he sparked further outrage with the image of a corpse identified as Uncle Sam. The famous rap-metal band's debut album depicts the infamous self-immolation of Vietnamese monk Thích Quảng Đức in 1963, protesting the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam's US-backed government. The graphic image caused outrage. Not displeased with the situation, frontman Zach de la Rocha famously burned a US flag at Woodstock '99. The question remains: Could anyone really be surprised with a name like Rage Against The Machine? Heavy metal has always been a genre that has courted controversy, and there are numerous album covers that have shocked over the years. For their 1994 album, titled 'Youthanasia', Megadeth wanted to comment on the fact that society was euthanizing the young. The visual depiction of this ended up being a woman hanging babies by their feet on her washing line. A bit on-the-nose, but it was enough to get everyone freaking out. Marilyn Manson has always pushed the envelope when it comes to taste, and the controversial rocker did just that in 2000 for the album 'Holy Wood (In The Shadow Of The Valley Of Death)'. The disturbing cover depicts Manson as a crucified Christ, which led US stores to ban it completely. Considering that the controversial shock rocker's intended purpose was to critique censorship and that the previous albums 'Mechanical Animals' and 'Portrait Of An American Family' also sparked moral panic, the reaction to the artwork must have delighted him. European fans of New York rockers The Strokes were treated with the original cover of their stunning debut album, featuring a leather gloved hand on a naked hip. The US were quick to call foul, however, disapproving of the suggestive nature of the image. The band had to swap the gorgeous shot by Colin Lane – who spontaneously took a picture of his then-girlfriend after she came out of the shower. The replacement? A psychedelic but far less impactful depiction of subatomic particle tracks. In 2001, US hip-hop group The Coup, composed of Boots Riley and DJ Pam the Funktress, wanted to make a statement about destroying capitalism. Their idea: pose in front of the World Trade Center on fire. The image was conceived prior to 9/11 and the eerie timing of the album's November release meant that they had to replace the image with a martini glass on fire. Probably for the best. The cover for Ted Nugent's album was pulled before it hit shelves - and considering the misogynist credentials of this particular image, it might have been for the best. The sleeve for 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' saw a painting of a naked Kanye West being straddled by a winged female monster with sharp teeth. The controversial rapper refused for the image be pulled, but the record label reached a compromise by pixelating the image in some territories. Sabrina Carpenter's 'Man's Best Friend' is released on 29 August.
