Alfred Brendel on Music: Collected Essays 1556524080, 9781556524080

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ALFRED BRENDEL ON MUSIC

COLLECTED

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COLLEGE AND Seninary

ALFRED

BRENDEL

“ON MUSIC

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brendel, Alfred

[Essays| Alfred Brendel on music / by Alfred Brendel. peciy Principally rev. versions of essays previously published in the collections Musical thoughts and afterthoughts and Music sounded out. Originally written variously in English or German; English translations provided by the author and others. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-55652-408-0 1. Music—History and criticism. I. Title. ML60 .B835 2000 780—dc21

00-064217

Music Sounded Out © 1991 by Alfred Brendel. All rights reserved. Published by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts © 1976 by Alfred Brendel. All rights reserved. Published by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.

This collection combines Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts, first published in Great Britain in 1976, and Music Sounded Out, first published in Great Britain in 1990, with amendments to the text, new

Acknowledgments and Preface, and seven additional essays never before published in book form. For complete publication history, see Acknowledgments and Preface, pages ix-xi and xiti-xiv. Alfred Brendel on Music © 2001 by Alfred Brendel All rights reserved Published by A Cappella Books An imprint of Chicago Review Press, Incorporated 814 North Franklin Street Chicago, Illinois 60610 ISBN 1-55652-408-0 peses al

Contents

Acknowledgments Preface

Xlil

A Mozart Player Gives Himself Advice

Minor Mozart: In Defense of His Solo Works Notes on a Complete Recording of Beethoven’s Piano Works

Werktreue—An Afterthought Form and Psychology in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas

The Process of Foreshortening in the First Movement of Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 2, No. 1 Musical Character(s) in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas

Beethoven’s New Style

Must Classical Music Be Entirely Serious? 1 The Sublime in Reverse 2 Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations

didls)

The Text and Its Guardians: Notes on Beethoven’s Piano Concertos

128

Schubert’s Piano Sonatas, 1822-1828

134

Schubert’s Last Sonatas

Los

A Footnote on the Playing of Schubert’s Four-Hand Works

216

Testing the Grown-Up Player: Schumann’s Kinderszenen

218

Theme and Variations ] Schumann and Beethoven 2 From Mozart to Brahms

229 239

[019GO

vi

Alfred Brendel

Liszt Misunderstood

236

Liszt and the Piano Circus—An Afterthought

241

The Noble Liszt

244

Liszt’s Années de pélerinage I and II

255

Liszt’s B minor Sonata

262

Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies

269

Liszt’s Bitterness of Heart

278

Liszt’s Piano Playing

279

Turning the Piano into an Orchestra: Liszt’s Transcriptions and Paraphrases

282

Fidelity to Liszt’s Letter?

288

A Peculiar Serenity: On the Thirtieth Anniversary of Busoni’s Death, 1954

293

Arlecchino and Doktor Faust: On the Centenary of Busoni’s Birth, 1966

299

Afterthoughts on Busoni

302

Superhuman Frailty: On Busoni’s Doktor Faust

304

On Playing Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto

olf

Wilhelm Furtwangler

322

Edwin Fischer: Remembering My Teacher

328

Afterthoughts on Edwin Fischer

ee!

Coping with Pianos

335

A Case for Live Recordings

345

On Recitals and Programmes

O02

Contents

From ‘Analysis’ to ‘Zubiaurre’ A Review of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

Vii

361

Three Interviews Talking to Brendel (with Jeremy Siepmann)

366

Bach and the Piano (with Terry Snow)

373

On Schnabel and Interpretation (with Konrad Wolff)

380

Select Bibliography

see!

Index

405

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/alfredbrendelonm000Obren

Acknowledgments

‘Notes on a Complete Recording of Beethoven’s Piano Works’, ‘Liszt Misunderstood’, ‘Liszt’s Piano Playing’, “Turning the Piano into an Orchestra’, ‘Fidelity to Liszt’s Letter?’, ‘A Peculiar Serenity’, ‘Ar-

lecchino and Doktor Faust’, ‘Edwin Fischer: Remembering My Teacher’ and ‘Coping with Pianos’ were translated from the German by Paul Hamburger. ‘A Mozart Player Gives Himself Advice’, ‘Form and Psychology in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas’, ‘The Text and Its Guardians’,

‘Beethoven’s

New

Style’, “Theme

and Variations II’,

‘Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies’, ‘Liszt’s Bitterness of Heart’ and ‘A Case for Live Recordings’ were translated by Eugene Hartzell. ‘Minor Mozart’ was translated by William Kinderman, ‘Musical Character(s)

in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas’ by Mark Evan Bonds. All the other essays were written in English or translated from the German by myself. The lecture on ‘Form and Psychology in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas’ was first given in German at Professor Harald Kaufman’s Institut fiir musikalische Wertungsforschung in Graz in 1969, and in its English version at the 1970 Dartington Summer School. ‘Musical “Character(s)

in Beethoven’s

Piano

Sonatas’

was

given at

Cologne University in 1998 as ‘On Character in Music’. ‘Must Classical Music Be Entirely Serious?’ was delivered as the Darwin Lecture at Cambridge University in 1984; ‘Schubert’s Last Sonatas’, in an abridged version, as the Edward Boyle Memorial Lecture at the Royal Society of Arts, London, on 30 November 1988. ‘Schubert’s Piano Sonatas, 1822-1828’ was given at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in 1973. In a similar or considerably divergent form, the following articles were previously printed: ‘A Mozart Player Gives Himself Advice’ in The New York Review of Books, 27 June 1985; in Die Zert (“Ermahnungen eines Mozartspielers an sich selbst’), 15 November 1985; as an accompaniment

to a Philips boxed set of the Mozart Piano Concertos, 1990.

x

Alfred Brendel

‘Minor Mozart’ (‘Mozcart fiir die Klavierstunde’) in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 October 1991. ‘Notes on a Complete Recording of Beethoven’s Piano Works’ (‘Anmerkungen zu einer Gesamtaufnahme der Navierwerke Beethovens’) in Hi Fi Stereophonie, Karlsruhe, May 1966. ‘Form and Psychology in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas’ in Music and Musicians, London, June 1971.

‘The Text and Its Guardians’ as an accompaniment to a Philips boxed set, 1983.

‘Musical Character(s) in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas’ (‘Gehérte Seelen und Landschaften’) in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 October 1996; in Beethoven Forum vol. 9, University of Nebraska Press, 2001, in The New York Review of Books, forthcoming.

‘Beethoven’s New Style’ as a sleeve note for Philips, 1976. ‘Schubert’s Piano Sonatas, 1822-1828’ as an accompaniment to a Philips boxed set containing my recordings of Schubert’s later piano works, and, simultaneously, in Hz Fi Stereophonie, Karlsruhe, June 1975; it was also used as the basis for a BBC discussion with

Stephan Plaistow in 1974. ‘Schubert’s Last Sonatas’ in The New York Review of Books, 2 February 1989; in the Royal Society of Arts Journal, London, June 1989. ‘A Footnote on the Playing of Schubert’s Four-Hand Works’ as a sleeve note for an Erato record of Imogen Cooper and Anne Queffelec, 1978.

‘Testing the Grown-Up Player: Schumann’s Kinderszenen’ in Musica, September/October 1981. ‘Theme and Variations II’ as an accompaniment to a Philips recording of Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes and variation works by Beethoven, 1991. ‘Liszt Misunderstood’ Vienna, 1961.

(‘Der missverstandene Liszt’) in Phono,

‘The Noble Liszt’ in The New York Review of Books, 20 November 1986. ‘Liszt’s Années de pélerinage I and ID for the programme accompanying a performance at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on 2 February 1986.

‘Liszt’s B minor Sonata’ as a sleeve note for Philips, 1981. ‘Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies’ as a sleeve note for Vanguard, 1968.

Acknowledgments

xi

‘Liszt’s Bitterness of Heart’ as a sleeve note for Philips, 1980; in The Musical Times, London. _ ‘A Peculiar Serenity’ (“Busoni, Vollender des Klavierspiels’) in Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift, Vienna, 1954. ‘Arlecchinoand Doktor Faust in Die Presse, Vienna, 2-3 April 1966.

‘Superhuman Frailty’ in The Times Literary Supplement, London, 13 June 1986. ‘On Playing Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto’ in The New York Re-

view of Books, 16 February 1995. ‘Wilhelm Furtwangler’ in Die Zeit, 13 November

1979; in The

New York Review of Books, 28 March 1991. ‘Remembering My Teacher’ (‘Edwin Fischer zum Gedenken’) in Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift, Vienna, 1960. ‘Coping with Pianos’ (“Vom Umgang mit Fltigeln’) in Hz Fi Stereophonte, Karlsruhe, December 1974.

‘A Case for Live Recordings’ (‘In Favor of Live Records’) Hz Fidelity, May 1984. ‘On Recitals and Programmes’ (‘Das Konzert bin ich’) in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 October 1990; (“The Pianist and the Program’) in The New York Review of Books, 22 November 1990. ‘From “Analysis” to “Zubiaurre”’ in The Sunday Times, London, 22 February 1981. ‘Werktreue—an Afterthought’, ‘Liszt and the Piano Circus’, ‘Liszt’s Piano Playing’, “Turning the Piano into an Orchestra’, ‘Fidelity to Liszt’s Letter?’, ‘Afterthoughts on Busoni’ and ‘Afterthoughts on Edwin Fischer’ were first published in Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts, 1976. Jeremy Siepmann’s interview originally appeared in Music and Musicians, London, December 1972; it is reprinted here in a slightly abridged version. The interview with Terry Snow was the accompanying text for a Bach record issued by Philips in 1977. The interview with Konrad Wolff appeared in The Piano Quarterly in 1979. Although the form is not that of an essay, I decided to include them because they make a number of points that I considered to fall

within the scope of this book. My thanks go to all the publishers concerned, as well as to Mr. Lawrence Schoenberg, who kindly gave permission to quote from Arnold Schoenberg’s notes on Busoni’s Entwurf einer neuen Asthetik der Tonkunst.

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