Alfred Brendel, Bravura Pianist Who Forged a Singular Path, Dies at 94
Alfred Brendel, a classical pianist who followed his own lights on a long path from obscurity to international stardom, gaining a devoted following in spite of influential critics who faulted his interpretations of the masters, died on Tuesday at his home in London. He was 94.
His death was announced by his family in a news release.
Mr. Brendel was unusual among modern concert artists. He had not been a child prodigy, he lacked the phenomenal memory needed to maintain a large repertoire with ease, and he had relatively little formal training. But he was a hard and cheerfully patient worker. For the most part he taught himself, listening to recordings and proceeding at a deliberate pace as he concentrated on a handful of composers, including Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Liszt and Schoenberg.
'I never had a regular piano teacher after the age of 16,' he told the critic Bernard Holland of The New York Times for a profile in 1981, although he did attend master classes in his native Austria with the Swiss pianist and conductor Edwin Fischer and the Austrian-born American pianist Eduard Steurmann. 'Self-discovery is a slower process but a more natural one.'
Over the years, Mr. Brendel developed and continually revised his own ideas on using the modern piano to make well-worn music sound fresh without violating the composers' intentions. How well he succeeded was very much a matter of taste. His analytical approach appealed especially to intellectuals and writers, and it didn't hurt, either, that he was himself an erudite writer on music history, theory and practice.
His fans filled the house to overflowing for recitals in New York, London and other major cities — including for his memorable cycle of the complete Beethoven sonatas at Carnegie Hall in 1983. Among his champions was Susan Sontag, who contributed a blurb to one of his several books of collected essays, 'Alfred Brendel on Music' (2000), saying he had 'changed the way we want to hear the major works of the piano repertory.'
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