Alfred Brendel

Alfred Brendel, praised as a supreme master of his art who is always searching for new perspectives, is recognized by audiences the world over for his legendary ability to convey the emotional and intellectual development of the music he performs. His accomplishments as an interpreter of the great composers have earned him a place among the most revered musicians of our time. For the 2002/03 season, he plays with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony and the Pittsburgh Symphony, as well as making his annual North American recital tour. In some cities he also reads selections from his poetry collection in special presentations.

In recent seasons, Mr. Brendel has played four Beethoven piano concerti with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa conducting, and toured North America playing recital programs of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms in New York, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Montreal, Ottawa, Princeton, Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Ft. Worth, St. Louis, Chicago's Orchestra Hall and in his annual return to New York's Carnegie Hall. He appeared at Carnegie Hall six times in a little over three weeks in 1999 to delight audiences with recitals, chamber music, lieder (joined by German baritone Matthias Goerne), poetry reading, and a Mozart concerto with The MET Orchestra with James Levine. Mr. Brendel's performance at Carnegie Hall on April 26, 1998 marked the exact anniversary of his first public recital fifty years to the date at the Kammermusiksaal in Graz, Austria. Similarly to the Carnegie Hall series of events, Alfred Brendel, chosen 'artiste etoile' at the Lucerne Festival also performed there in recital, with the MET Orchestra and James Levine, in lieder recital with Matthias Goerne, in poetry readings, in a discussion of his recent book Ausgerechnet Ich ("Me, of all people"), and in chamber music with Adrian Brendel.

Mr. Brendel performs regularly with virtually all of the leading orchestras and conductors of the world. He has presented recitals in the major centers of Europe, Great Britain and Japan and his annual tours of North America have taken him coast to coast. In recent seasons Mr. Brendel has concertized with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras, and has appeared in Dallas, Toronto, Kalamazoo (at the Gilmore Keyboard Festival) and at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In 1997/98 Mr. Brendel augmented his coast to coast tour to present an evening of reflection and commentary on music, literature and the visual arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In Europe, his extensive schedule included repeated appearances with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic and with Sir Simon Rattle and the Vienna Philharmonic.

Renowned for his masterly interpretations of the works of Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt and Beethoven, in 1983 Alfred Brendel became the first pianist since the legendary Artur Schnabel to play all 32 Beethoven sonatas at Carnegie Hall.

Mr. Brendel is one of the most prolific recording artists of our time, and for the past thirty years he has recorded exclusively for Philips Classics. He is the first pianist to have recorded all of Beethoven's piano compositions and one of the few to have recorded all of the Mozart piano concertos. His extensive discography includes The Art of Alfred Brendel, a deluxe limited edition collection which features Mr. Brendel's interpretations of Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, Liszt, Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann. The most recent Brendel releases include a live recording of Schubert sonatas; the five Beethoven piano concertos with Sir Simon Rattle and the Vienna Philharmonic (this is the fourth time Mr. Brendel has committed these works to disc); Mozart Concertos K. 466 and 491 with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Sir Charles Mackerras; a disc of Mozart sonatas; and a live recording of Haydn, Schubert and Liszt in Salzburg. Other recent releases include Schumann's Piano Concerto, Schoenberg's Piano Concerto, and the complete Bagatelles of Beethoven. Prizes for his recordings are many, including the Grand Prix du Disque, the Japan Record Academy Award, Gramophone's "Critics' Choice," the Grand Prix de l'Acad�mie du disque fran�ais, the Edison Prize, the British Music Trades Association Prize, and many others.

Mr. Brendel is very knowledgeable in the fields of literature, language, architecture and films. In addition to his two new books, Alfred Brendel on Music and Ausgerechnet Ich ("Me, of all people"), Mr. Brendel has published two of his collections of articles and lectures (Meditations on Music and Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts) and a collection of essays (Music Sounded Out from Farrar Straus Giroux). Mr. Brendel is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, having written articles on Mozart, Liszt and Schoenberg. A poet as well, he has published several volumes of poetry, including One Finger Too Many, published in the U.S. by Random House. He is the subject of a BBC documentary entitled Alfred Brendel - Man and Mask.

Born in Austria to parents of no particular musical bent, Alfred Brendel spent his childhood traveling throughout Yugoslavia and Austria. His father, who worked at various stages in his life as an architectural engineer, businessman, and cinema director, also ran a resort hotel for a while on the Adriatic. Mr. Brendel began piano lessons at the age of six, and, owing to continuous travel, had to give up one piano teacher after another. In his teens, he attended a relatively unknown music school -- the Graz Conservatory -- and also showed artistic talent in the areas of painting and composition. When he made his recital debut at the age of 17, an art gallery near the concert hall was showing a one-man exhibition of his watercolors.

Thereafter, he discontinued formal piano studies, preferring instead to attend occasional master classes, especially those by the revered pianist Edwin Fischer. To this day Mr. Brendel regards his untraditional musical background as something of an advantage. "Many times a teacher can be too influential," he feels. "Being self-taught, I learned to distrust anything I hadn't figured out myself." Although Mr. Brendel's artistic interests as a young man did not focus on music alone, his winning of a prize at the prestigious Busoni Piano Competition launched his career as a performing musician. Early on, he established a reputation of unusual integrity and insight in the music of such Central European masters as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, as well as in the music of Liszt and particular moderns.

Alfred Brendel is the recipient of honorary doctorates from Oxford, London, Sussex and Yale universities, and is only the third pianist in history to be named an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic, a rare distinction he shares with two eminent pianists of the past: Emil von Sauer and Wilhelm Backhaus. He has been awarded the Leonie Sonning Prize, the Furtwaengler Prize for Musical Interpretation, and the South Bank Award in London, and most lately the Robert Schumann prize in Zwickau, Schumann's birthplace. He was also appointed an honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1989 for his "outstanding services to music in Britain," where he has made his home since 1972.