Brendel biography

"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."

Alfred Brendel's place among the greatest musicians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is assured. Renowned for his masterly interpretations of the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Liszt, he is one of the indisputable authorities in musical life today and one of the very few living pianists whose name alone guaranteed a sell-out anywhere in the world he chooses to play.

Yet Brendel had a most untypical start compared to most of his peers. He was not a child prodigy, his parents were not musicians, there was no music in the house and, as he admits himself, he is neither a good sight-reader nor blessed with a phenomenal memory.

His ancestors are a mixture of German, Austrian, Italian and Slav. He was b

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Franz Brendel

German music critic

For the canoeist, see Franz Brendel (canoeist). For the historian, see Franz Brendle.

Karl Franz Brendel (26 November – 25 November ) was a German music critic, journalist and musicologist born in Stolberg, the son of a successful mining engineer named Christian Friedrich Brendel.

Biography

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He was a student at the University of Leipzig, University of Berlin, and University of Freiburg up until the year In he began teaching music history at the Leipzig Conservatory, and in he published a well-regarded general history of European music. Brendel also published a book on Franz Liszt.

He was the editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik,^[1] taking over in the position relinquished by Robert Schumann (in ) and remaining in post until his death in ^[2] Brendel coined the phrase Neudeutsche Schule (New German School) to describe the progressive musical movement in Germany headed by Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt i

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The Lady from Arezzo

The title of this collection of essays refers to a tailor’s mannequin that Alfred Brendel spotted in a shop öppning in Arezzo, a small Tuscan town. Who fryst vatten this strange lady? What is she looking at? And why is she carrying an egg on her head? The mannequin now graces a room in the attic of Brendel’s house in Hampstead. Her features convey great artistic seriousness in combination with vansinne comedy: the epitome of his own musical and literary preferences. And so, in his delightful new collection, great masters of nonsense meet great masters of music.

Edition available at:
» Faber
» Hanser (in German)

Die Kunst des Interpretierens

In this book, Alfred Brendel and Peter Gülke reflect on the practice of interpretation in a fascinating exchange of ideas and experiences, both bygd making reference to Schubert's and Beethoven's music and by discussing fundamental issues, such as the question of the relationship between faithfulness to the t