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Pianist Alfred Brendel takes final bow from concert stage
2008-12-17
VIENNA (AFP) - 2008 has been a year of farewells in Vienna, Europe's classical music capital. In the summer, the legendary string quartet, the Alban Berg Quartet, gave its final concert in the city's "Konzerthaus" concert hall after 37 years on the podium. This week one of the world's greatest pianists, Alfred Brendel, gives his last-ever public performance, this time in the famous Golden Auditorium of Vienna's "Musikverein". Marking the end of a 60-year career, Brendel will perform Mozart's ninth piano concerto, K.271 in E-flat major, the "Jeunehomme" or "Jenamy". There will be two performances, on Wednesday and on Thursday, with the Vienna Philharmonic under Sir Charles Mackerras. The "Jenamy" concerto is a fitting way to mark Brendel's retirement. The youthful work, written when Mozart was only 21, is full of surprising formal innovations and boundless melodic exuberance. Brendel's inimitable gait -- a forward-leaning scuttle across the stage -- has become more bowed with age and arthritis prevents him from playing gargantuan works of the repertoire, such as Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" or Liszt's B-minor sonata. But the 77-year-old pianist has lost none of the mischievous wit and playfulness. His detractors accuse him of being overly austere and intellectual. But fellow musicians disagree. Writing in the British newspaper The Guardian this week, pianist and former pupil Imogen Cooper said: "To call Brendel cerebral would imply too much coldness. He has always been very thoughtful. Listening to him play Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, you have a sense of his deep understanding of the idiom of these composers. He is aware of every marking, and understands what that marking means -- what Schubert marks as a dot and what Mozart marks as a dot isn't always the same thing." Brendel was born in 1931 in Wiesenberg in what is now the Czech Republic. When asked about his musical aptitude, he insists that he was no child prodigy. "My parents were not musicians. There was no music in the house. I'm neither a good sight reader nor blessed with a phenomenal memory," he writes on his website. Apart from piano lessons on an off between the ages of six and 16, Brendel received little formal training and describes himself as largely self-taught. He gave his first public recital at the age of 17 in Graz, southern Austria, with works by Bach, Brahms and Liszt, as well as a piece of his own composition. Brendel says the start to his career was a something of a slow burn. "When I was young my overall career wasn't sensational at all, it rather progressed step by step." But the tide suddenly turned after a Beethoven performance in London -- his home since 1971 -- and three major record companies offered him contracts. Brendel is now regarded as one of the most prolific recording artists, with an extensive repertoire ranging from Bach and Haydn to Weber to Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Mussorgsky and Schoenberg. Throughout his career, however, his main focus has been on the works of Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert. He was first pianist ever to record Beethoven's entire oeuvre for piano and one of the few to record all of Mozart's piano concertos. Conductor Bernhard Haitink said of him: "He is always searching for something he didn't know before. Each work Beethoven composed for piano has a different style and character, and Brendel has thought about each of them so intensely, so intellectually, so musically, that he comes up with results that are very special." The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians says Brendel is "capable of winning through to that 'second simplicity' where the listener has the sensation of music not being played, but happening by itself." Brendel, a published author of books on music and humorous verse, says he will have plenty to do after his final concert. "Unlike some of my colleagues, I'm not addicted to playing. I have interests aside from music," he said in a recent interview. "I have all sorts of plans next year. After a break of a few months, I'll be giving lectures, readings, seminars, doing more writing. I'm always writing something."
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