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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.”
Additional sources • New York Times, Le Monde
