the rix mix

Pianist Brendel to take final bow

Alfred Brendel, one of the world's greatest pianists, is giving his final public performances this week.

Brendel, 77, will take his final bow at the famous Golden Auditorium of Musikverein, in Vienna, Austria, after 60 years on the concert stage.

He will perform Mozart's ninth piano concerto, K.271 in E-flat major - the Jenamy - with the Vienna Philharmonic later and on Thursday.

I don't know why he's retiring altogether. He's received wonderful reviews over the past year on his farewell tour.

My modest cd collection of Beethoven solo piano music is built around the recordings a young Brendel made for the bargain Vox label in the Fifties & Sixties, most of them still available. Initially considered rather dry & cerebral by some critics, they were highly regarded by the time I came to them. By then, Brendel had switched to the major Phillips label & made beautiful recordings of Schubert, not as common a thing as one might imagine, & which became a specialty for him. My generation was inclined to disdain the old superstar pianists like Horowitz & Arthur Rubenstein (though we're more appreciative now). My first Brendel record - I was about 18 - was of two finger-twisting virtuoso Russian compositions, "Pictures At An Exhibition" & "Islamey - An Oriental Fantasy" in gawdawful "Reprocessed Stereo," how record companies used to recycle & ruin monophonic recordings. That wasn't the musical direction Brendel took once he got himself established. He continued rethinking & refining his Beethoven as he matured. His intellectual approach to Middle-European piano repertoire became influential on subsequent generations of pianists. "At his best," one critic wrote, "he loses himself in the music." This is quite different than the music being lost in the performer.

Brendel's cycle for Vox is so complete that it includes a Three CD set of "Variations & Vignettes for Piano," an indispensable assortment of mostly dispensable, very minor Beethoven works like "5 Variations on 'Rule Britannia' in D Major," which Brendel performs with technical aplomb & a slight smile, as Beethoven would have. The guy has a sense of humor. He's always presented himself as a fine musician going about his business of making fine music, knowing full well that he was great musician performing great music. Although he's retiring from live performance, I haven't read that he's quitting the recording studio, so perhaps he'll be enticed into staying with us awhile longer in that that capacity.

Labels: music