317 35 21MB
English Pages 432 [436] Year 2000
ALFRED BRENDEL ON MUSIC
COLLECTED
£5547.
1
LMICOLN
COLLEGE AND Seninary
ALFRED
BRENDEL
“ON MUSIC
GO’ Lo DeeGa Tek, DIM RBUSSSYAX YS
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.
o>.
Adentebabedbiiad.
ides
ea
‘wet
enry
rhe
4sees etal
Pats nq,
4 V1
5
>
ROSi Fay _aedopeyt
ot? “Mader peeaion! Ea 9 plait sediviilee
8
gi
Alp Aine:
ie ie
Tal awedEL. ghana Apel ie antech ep
hdres
ye Tiere! osnintiladel ofteorar: pth, Chagaien)