Alfred Brendel

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

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My castaway this week is the pianist Alfred Brendel. A performer of world renown, his career spans seven decades. He's particularly known for his interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt.

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An Austrian who's lived in the UK for many years, he was born in 1931 in what is now the Czech Republic.

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Although not from a musical family, he began playing the piano aged six, and gave his first recital at seventeen.

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Largely self taught, in addition to his live performances, he's enjoyed a long and successful recording career.

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Revered for his intellect and individual and original take on the world, he is also a published poet and essayist. He says I regard pessimism as a sign of intelligence. Optimism is a very welcome and life enhancing feature, a gift, but not necessarily a realistic outlook. I am a pessimist who enjoys being pleasantly surprised.

Presenter1:29

I wonder at your grand age, then, Alfred, what surprises you these days?

Alfred Brendel1:33

Now this is a very difficult question. I was surprised last year when suddenly my hearing broke down. And that was one of the worst surprises I had in my life. I don't go to concerts anymore or very rarely. I hardly listen to music at home. But I still listen to a few pianists whom I know very well. I have now adjusted to it to a degree and I can crack some jokes again.

Presenter1:41

Yeah.

Presenter2:02

Right. You cracked I have to tell people, you cracked a very funny joke as I was about to read the introduction there. We were listening to the infamous Desert Island Disc's sig tune, and you looked at me through your glasses and said, I did not choose this one. Was that painful for you to listen to?

Alfred Brendel2:16

It was short. Mercifully short.

Presenter2:18

Fancifully short. What about the satisfaction of performing to an appreciative and knowledgeable audience? I wonder how much you miss that.

Alfred Brendel2:29

I don't miss it at all, and when I stopped playing

Alfred Brendel2:33

In my seventy-eighth year, for good, I did not shed a tear. I was very pleased that some other people shed it for me. But I have never been just a piano player and I'm still writing. I knew that I would lecture and give masterclasses and give readings of my poetry. And all of this has happened.

Presenter2:59

You are drawn to the absurd. I was watching a documentary and and

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In your home there were lots of carvings of

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I mean, grotesque masks and gargoylish features on the wall. Wha why do you like those?

Alfred Brendel3:12

You know, I have n I have not been in analysis. I didn't need to, and I'm very glad about it. And also, I have not particularly avidly analyzed myself. There are many more things, other things that interest me more than my own personality.

Presenter3:31

You've chosen your music, listeners will not be surprised to know with meticulous care to day. Is it the piece of work itself, or is it the rendition by the particular performer that has led your choice?

Alfred Brendel3:43

Oh, hopefully both. The piece should be representative for something that that I particularly like, and the performance should be on a very high level.

Presenter3:52

Tell me then about this first piece of music that we're going to hear this morning, your your first disc?

Alfred Brendel3:58

Well, since the end of the war, Hendel's music and reputation has been recovered. I enormously admire this composer. While his wonderful operas and loratorios were unearthed, there was also a technical change in musical performance, because suddenly there were lots of singers who could sing coloratura marvellously well, and Hendel sets the music on fire with it. It's an aria from Giulio Cesare by Hendel, a lampo dell'armi, sung by the wonderful

Alfred Brendel4:37

David Deniels.

Speaker 34:43

On for the dollars in the founder again, I'm in this cover, window, summer.

Speaker 35:13

Quest of Ariel!

Speaker 35:20

Yeah.

Speaker 35:25

And look for it all the time. We can't remember

Speaker 35:31

Ah

Speaker 35:34

With all the market hair of English.

Presenter5:41

From Handel's Giulio Cesare or Lampa del Ormi, sung by David Daniels. So, Alfred Brendel, you have spoken often on the fascinating subject of what it is that makes an artist, and you said that without the ability to control feeling, the performer will not be an artist, but an amateur. How does one control feeling?

Alfred Brendel6:01

Well, first of all, of course, you have to have enough feeling to want to control it. But in in music, even if the feeling is beginning and the end of of the procedure of performance, it w would not happen without the filter of the intellect. Without this, there is no work of art. There has to be a cooperation between both.

Presenter6:23

And the player should be led by the piece always?

Alfred Brendel6:25

Absolutely so, yes. And this is not always the case. There are quite a lot of players, or well at least some players, who think that a composition is a raw material on which they can put their stamp, their personal stamp. Now, without the personality of the player nothing is possible, but there is still the piece and the composer who tells the performer what to do.

Presenter6:52

Can we talk for a moment about the actual um the physicality of playing? I read that you you would um bind your fingers with plasters. When was that when you were practicing or when you were actually playing in concert?

Alfred Brendel7:04

I started it because I had to record Slavinski's Petrushka, which is a very percussive piece. And I noticed after a few days of practising that my fingernails were wilting away, so I had to think of something. It takes a few days to get used to the plasters, but if you use the right kind uh there is absolutely no burial of the sensitivity of feeling.

Presenter7:30

Time for some more music, then, Alfred Brendel. Tell me about the second disc that we're going to hear this morning.

Alfred Brendel7:35

I had the good fortune to meet Edwin Fischer, a great pianist, and attend three of his masterclasses.

Alfred Brendel7:44

Edwin Fischer has remained the pianist who moved me most. He also showed me that it is not the performer's first task to dismantle it, but rather to show how the whole is maintained by the composer leading from the first note to the last. And it is the greatest example of singing on the piano that I know. It's the second movement of Mach's F minor concerto.

Presenter9:24

That was Bach's F minor piano concerto, the second movement played by Edwin Fischer and the Edwin Fischer Chamber Orchestra. It was recorded in Berlin in 1938. So, Alfred Brendel, you hold an Austrian passport, but you you were born in 1931 in Wiesenberg, in northern Moravia, as it then was, now part of the Czech Republic, and you spent your early years on a little Croatian island. What what do you remember about your very early childhood?

Alfred Brendel9:49

When I still was in Moravia and very little, I had a nannie who taught me a lot of folk songs, some sort of introduction into music. When I was at that island called Kirk, I operated the record player of the hotel which

Presenter9:58

Yeah.

Alfred Brendel10:05

My parents run.

Alfred Brendel10:08

and put on operetta records and sang along. We left there when I had to go to school in Zagreb.

Presenter10:14

Tell me a bit more about your parents, then.

Alfred Brendel10:17

Well, the whole family was non intellectual, non artistic and non-musical. They were loving parents, and I'm very grateful for that. They were reliable people. But

Alfred Brendel10:31

Anything that had to do with thinking, with aesthetics, I had to do on my own.

Presenter10:39

You say it wasn't an artistic house. You ha you had a piano, though?

Alfred Brendel10:42

Uh there was a piano in in Zagreb, so my parents thought it would be good to have a few piano lessons, as they had when they were very young, just as a kind of of bourgeois habit. And when I was sixteen, my piano teacher in Graz told me, I have told you everything that I can tell you, so you go on by yourself. And uh she uh put me in contact with Edwin Fischer.

Alfred Brendel11:11

And then I had my first recital and then it it went on from there.

Presenter11:16

What would you say then are the prerequisites of of a great pianist? It is not then to be surrounded by music and art at an early age.

Alfred Brendel11:25

Not necessarily, but my whole uh development, my whole career was not typical.

Alfred Brendel11:31

And I do not want to present it to other young people as a model.

Presenter11:36

Have you ever questioned what was the seed for this terrific ability that you went on to develop?

Alfred Brendel11:42

All these things became conscious much later, of course, but I would say uh apart from talent one needs a lot of other things, like uh

Alfred Brendel11:52

Ambition, perseverance, patience.

Alfred Brendel11:56

which I fortunately had.

Alfred Brendel11:59

A good constitution.

Alfred Brendel12:02

And luck.

Presenter12:03

Yes, the important one.

Alfred Brendel12:05

Not least.

Presenter12:07

Let's have some more music, Alfred Brendel. We're going to listen to your third choice of the morning. Tell me about this. Why have you chosen this?

Alfred Brendel12:13

For my Mozart playing and actually for all the other composers, it was to me most important to sing and speak at the same time. And Mozart operas were the greatest model for this. I often attended opera performances in Vienna and in Salzburg. And Sena Jurinaz was one of the great singers that belonged to the ensemble of the Vienna States Opera. She was also lovely to look at. She's singing Ze Veretti Luzigieri from I Domeneo. That was one of the old Landworn performances conducted by Fritz Busch.

Presenter13:57

From Mozart to Domineo, that was Efferetta Le Singhillere, sung by Sena Jurinatz with the Gleinborn Festival Orchestra conducted by Fritz Busch. That was recorded at Gleinborn in nineteen fifty one. And I I must apologize to you, Alfred Brendel. It's never easy for our castaways to know that their music's going to be cut after a couple of minutes, but I think it's paining you more than most here.

Alfred Brendel14:17

Yes, I I have to submit to your rules.

Presenter14:21

I can only apologise about the rules. Um so your family moved to Graz in Austria during the war. You were just a young boy, and I've read that Hitler actually visited the town you were living in. What do you remember of that?

Alfred Brendel14:34

Uh I saw him on the street. There were hundreds, thousands of of people s screaming with delight, and he was in an open car with his uh arm stretched out.

Alfred Brendel14:48

So uh he he was treated like almost like a messiah.

Alfred Brendel14:54

It was an old

Alfred Brendel14:56

consideration whether Austria should be part of Germany or not has nothing to do with the Nazis.

Presenter15:02

Tell me what impression that made upon you, long term of watching that happen.

Alfred Brendel15:05

I was just storing impressions. It was much later that I realized what this was meaning. I can only tell you that my memories of the wartime have been decisive for my whole life. They have prevented me from being credulous.

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Meaning

Alfred Brendel15:26

from from fanaticism, from nationalism.

Alfred Brendel15:31

From creeds of any kind.

Alfred Brendel15:33

And I'm very grateful for the experience.

Alfred Brendel15:37

Horrifying as it was.

Presenter15:38

Can we talk for a moment about your your first piano teacher? When you started playing piano at six, did you immediately know that you had found something that you wanted to pursue?

Alfred Brendel15:48

No.

Presenter15:50

Right.

Alfred Brendel15:50

So it was in my teens that I started to lay the ground for the future, playing the piano, composing, painting, writing and reading a vast amount. And these first post-war years in Graz were my short period of genius.

Alfred Brendel16:11

After my first recital, which was very well received, it was clear that I would pursue a life as a pianist and cont continue writing.

Presenter16:21

Alfred Brenda, we'll come back to your short period of genius in just a second. But for now, we are on your fourth disc of the morning. Tell me about this.

Alfred Brendel16:28

There is a great composer who has been sometimes put down next to Mozart, which is Haydn. And apart from everything else, he has introduced humour into music without the word and the stage. And to give you an example, the last movement of the string quartet, August Twenty, number four, is of an outrageous humour.

Presenter17:53

That was Haydn's String Quartet Obus twenty number four, the fourth movement performed by the Lindsay String Quartet. You were noting during that, Alfred Brendel, that you thought that was a particularly marvellous performance.

Alfred Brendel18:03

Yes, I thought the lint is very unique in in their way of handling Haydn.

Presenter18:06

Um, let's talk a little bit more about you I mean, you described it and you had a big smile on your face when you said it my short period of genius when you began in your teenage years to play seriously and gave your first recital aged was it seventeen?

Alfred Brendel18:22

Mm-hmm.

Presenter18:23

Tell me about that. What are your memories of that?

Alfred Brendel18:24

Well, s very strangely. I I put the programme together myself.

Alfred Brendel18:30

And it contained

Alfred Brendel18:32

Works by Bach, Brahms.

Alfred Brendel18:35

a piano sonata of my own composition with a double fugue, of course, then a piece by Malipiero which was called Three Preludes to One Fugue, and then List B A C H Fantasy. And there were four anchors that also contained fugues, and I got through that.

Presenter18:53

How did you look? What were you wearing?

Alfred Brendel18:55

I wore, as it was customary then, tails.

Alfred Brendel18:59

And my father did my uh

Presenter19:01

You but I

Alfred Brendel19:02

What I

Presenter19:02

Your parents obviously would have been in the audience. Can you rem

Alfred Brendel19:05

Yes, yes, yes. Oh, my father was was always very supportive and my mother was always horrified that uh I should go into this business and not to university to to get a a degree and a pension. She was the pessimist and my father was the optimist. But I think she nearly forgave me when I got my first honorary degree in at l at London University.

Presenter19:24

Yeah.

Presenter19:31

Tell me then about teaching yourself. How did you go about teaching yourself once the piano teachers had said they could do no more?

Alfred Brendel19:39

I was learning pieces, I was trying to get the message from the pieces.

Alfred Brendel19:45

I listened to conductors and singers. This was my most important information, and should be maybe the most important information to any pianist.

Presenter19:55

You didn't study at a conservatoire or go to a music school.

Alfred Brendel19:58

I was at the Conservatoire as an externist, but otherwise I did not have an affiliation with uh a musical institution. Also I was never a teacher at the Conservatoire or an Academy. That fits into my individualistic outlook. I like to be as independent as possible.

Presenter20:20

What do you think the nature of your genius is?

Alfred Brendel20:23

I am not calling myself a genius. This was a mock genius when I was very young. I would never speak of myself, or of actually of any performer, as a genius.

Presenter20:35

So when other people have spoken of you in those terms, what what do you think about that?

Alfred Brendel20:40

I tell them that uh if they want to use the word genius, they should apply it to composers.

Presenter20:47

Well, let's look at your next composer then. We're on your fifth disc of the morning. You've chosen what?

Alfred Brendel20:51

Beethoven's string quartet in C sharp minor, opus one thirty one, one of the greatest pieces of music as far as I am concerned. The Busch Quartet, the early recordings from the thirties were for me a particularly important source of information about Beethoven playing. Again, there is something very moving about uh Bush's playing which I uh rarely find today.

Presenter22:22

That was the first movement of Beethoven's String Quartet, opus one thirty one, the first movement performed by the Busch Quartet. That was recorded in nineteen thirty six. So, Alfred Brendel, um you said that you were not impatient early in your uh career, that you never set out to be an overnight success. Why was that your plan?

Alfred Brendel22:39

You ask me things and you say why, and I cannot tell you. It was maybe my nature, my inclination. I remember that when I was in my twenties I did not have the ambition to be famous in in two years' time. I noticed that I had some talent and I also wanted to do the best possible with that talent.

Alfred Brendel23:09

But it was not certain to say where the talent would lead, how far it would go, and the best thing one could do is to try and develop it as best as possible. And those musicians who have impressed me very much were in their fifties and sixties.

Presenter23:26

In a live performance, what do you think the audience's contribution is?

Alfred Brendel23:31

Concentration

Alfred Brendel23:33

Silence.

Alfred Brendel23:35

The artist is on the podium and there is a sort of uh electric circuit that goes down and if the public is participating with concentration, it may come back to him and enhance his playing.

Presenter23:49

Is it the case that you did once in Chicago uh tell a woman that she had to to stop coughing?

Alfred Brendel23:54

Well, actually, yes, yes. I I started with a very soft piece and people were coughing and I stopped and said

Alfred Brendel24:02

Ladies and gentlemen,

Alfred Brendel24:04

I can hear you, but you can't hear me.

Alfred Brendel24:08

After that the public's usually really silent. I got two angry letters from old ladies.

Presenter24:17

Let's have some music, then. We are on your sixth of the day, Alfred Brendel.

Alfred Brendel24:22

Schubert is of course a very important composer in my life. I was fortunate to spread the gospel about Schubert's sonatas that were hardly played after the last war and are now

Alfred Brendel24:36

quite popular with pianists and and the public alike.

Alfred Brendel24:41

And some of the best truck playing I can present is that of the Kaulish Quartet.

Alfred Brendel24:48

And the College Quartet was based in Vienna around nineteen thirties, and now they play the third movement of Schubert's A minor quartet in the most sophisticated and refined Viennese way.

Presenter25:57

That was Schubert's string quartet in A minor, the third movement performed by the Kohlisch Quartet from the original Seventy-Eight recording. Alfred Brendel, you've been uh married twice. You're a father of four. I'm wondering about the life of a concert pianist. Do you think as your children were growing up, given the amount of time you must have spent in airplanes and hotel rooms, um do you think you were available to them? Do you think you were one of those fathers who was around enough?

Alfred Brendel26:19

Not always, no, no, and there were there were also complaints, but uh I think they got over it.

Alfred Brendel26:27

And and my my my my wife uh looked after them very well. I have a son who is a very good cellist.

Presenter26:35

Yes, that's Adrian.

Alfred Brendel26:36

Yes. I have a daughter, Doris, from my first marriage, who is a pop and rock singer and composer.

Alfred Brendel26:43

And the other two girls are not directly affiliated with music, and I I never expected it anyway. I rather wanted to prevent my children uh unless they are extremely good. And when my son Adrian played a movement of a beta sonata at his school, aged ten,

Alfred Brendel27:03

I told myself this is a musician and he should have

Alfred Brendel27:07

the chance to to develop what he's doing.

Presenter27:10

And what about Doris with her pop and rock career?

Alfred Brendel27:12

Uh I'm happy if she's happy, as long as I do not have to listen to it too often.

Presenter27:19

And there are no pop and rock choices today. Would you ever listen to pop music for pleasure? No. No. No.

Alfred Brendel27:23

No, no, no, no, no. You see, I'm interested in the in the whole of what's sometimes called classical music. I'm interested in the arts. I'm I'm reading, I'm writing, I'm thinking sometimes even.

Alfred Brendel27:38

So when should I listen to pop and rock music?

Presenter27:41

You've published collections of essays, um a book on the piano, two collections of poetry. You've said that the words impose themselves upon you, especially when it comes to your poetry. Tell me about that.

Alfred Brendel27:51

Well, I didn't set out to write poems. I was in a plane to Japan and the the lights were turned off and we tried to sleep, and suddenly a poem came into my mind and I grabbed a piece of paper in the dark to to write it down.

Alfred Brendel28:08

And when there were fifteen poems, somebody naughtily showed it to a German publisher and he said, If this goes on, we will make a book. It enriched my life. It was a it was a new d dimension, because what I was doing on the piano was to play the products of others. And here these are these were my own products. Uh a quite different situation.

Presenter28:31

Let's have some more music. We're on your penultimate choice, Alfred Brendel. Tell me about disc number seven.

Alfred Brendel28:35

Diedrik Fischer Diska was one of the most outstanding musicians I've met and worked with.

Alfred Brendel28:43

He had a style of singing where you could understand the word and hear every inflection in the last row.

Alfred Brendel28:50

And uh there is a BBC Ric live recording. It was a concert in the festival hall in in 1970 and I was there.

Speaker 429:05

When I shall spot

Speaker 429:15

Grillish toiled mind.

Speaker 429:23

A re shall.

Presenter29:40

That was Dietrich Fischer Descow singing one of Mahler's songs of the Wayfarer. He was accompanied on piano by Karl Engel. So given, as you said to me at the very beginning when we began talking, Alfred Brendel, that you've never gone in for any sort of analysis, I guess you prefer self discovery. What have you discovered about yourself over the years?

Alfred Brendel30:00

You misunderstand me. I am not used to thinking about myself. I have I I d I am I don't have the goal to understand myself. I don't have the goal to understand the world. For me the world is absurd anyway. I do not go as far as to justify the existence of God or whatever whatever. I think these are questions that should be

Alfred Brendel30:28

Avoid it.

Presenter30:31

Because they'll lead to nothing? Why should they be avoided?

Alfred Brendel30:37

Because they lead to nothing. I mean they m they lead maybe into a creed and and make make your life easier. I realize that.

Presenter30:42

Make

Alfred Brendel30:47

It may be a help to many.

Alfred Brendel30:49

But if you're looking for

Alfred Brendel30:52

For truth whatever it means.

Alfred Brendel30:55

then I don't think it it gets you very far. If a man from another planet or or creature or or whatever, may hopefully grotesque creature comes to this world and asks me what is the most significant thing about mankind, I would say the urge for self-deception.

Presenter31:16

Do you think you've found a kind of truth in music?

Alfred Brendel31:20

I certainly find truth, but

Alfred Brendel31:25

I abhor

Alfred Brendel31:27

The

Alfred Brendel31:28

conviction that one has to find the one and absolute truth.

Alfred Brendel31:34

There are trues with an S.

Presenter31:36

Yes. Um we're going to cast you away to an island, as we've discussed. You said earlier that you don't relish the thought of that, because you're not a practical person. How about emotionally? How would you survive with just your own company?

Alfred Brendel31:49

Well, if I would have a nice little Baroque church or Romanesque church, I would survive better, not praying, but just f finding a kind of peace there.

Presenter32:03

We shall come to your luxuries in just a moment, and maybe the church will be in there. But for now we must listen to your last piece of music. Tell me about the final piece we're going to hear this morning.

Alfred Brendel32:05

Maybe it's

Alfred Brendel32:11

I selected Schoenberg's String Trio, I think it's one of his greatest works, and in the context of my keen appreciation of new music.

Alfred Brendel32:23

For me, each masterpiece, even of the same composer, has something that other masterpieces do not have, and it's this particular thing that has been added to musical experience.

Presenter33:41

That was Schoenberg's string trio performed by the La Salle Quartette. It's time then for me to give you the books you get to take to this island of yours the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you are allowed to take one other book along to accompany them.

Alfred Brendel33:54

I'm very grateful for these two. And I'm I'm selecting something that most British people will not know. It's the aphorisms of Lichtenberg.

Alfred Brendel34:08

who was a great writer, wit, and physicist of the Enlightenment. It's an important thing that he was a wit.

Presenter34:17

Right. That's yours then. And you're allowed a luxury. What's your luxury going to be for this island?

Alfred Brendel34:23

There is in the Provence a l huge ruin of of a convent which is called Montmajour.

Alfred Brendel34:31

And next to it there is a very small Romanesque chapel. This would be my choice.

Presenter34:38

Absolutely, it's yours to take. And finally, then, which one track this may be impossible for you which one of these eight would you save from the waves if they were threatened to be washed away?

Alfred Brendel34:48

Very difficult. But I probably stay with the Bush Quartet and Beethoven's C sharp minor quartet.

Presenter34:56

It's yours. Alfred Rendell, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Alfred Brendel35:01

Pleasure.

Presenter35:18

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.