The final, revised, perfected version of Alfred Brendel’s essays on music is like the final, revised, perfected version of one of hid great performances - his last thoughts, say, on the Diabelli Variations, on which he sees possibility of improving, and amid which there is nothing to be amended.
His last performances were given some years ago now, the ne plus ultra a performance of Mozart’s E flat major Piano Concerto, K271, in Vienna with Sir Charles Mackerras as conductor, after which he retired from the concert platform.
The perfected version of his essays, entitled Music, Sense, and Nonsense, were published last month, and are comparable with, or I would now say preferable to, those of Donald Francis Tovey, which I devoured in my boyhood but feel that I have now outgrown, at least in the sense that I am unlikely to read them again.
But I am still reading, and re-reading, Brendel. He can be tough going, especially on the complete piano works of Beethoven, but he continues to be worth the overcoming of any obstacles he places in your path. He is witty, though less so than Tovey. He is a formidable authority on whatever he writes about. And he has his occasionally irritating foibles, such as his refusal to accept the vast, important repeated section in the first movement of Schubert’s last piano sonata, his failure to like Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, and his lack of enthusiasm for Chopin, in comparison with Liszt.
But on Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, in general, he is massively convincing, and happily they form the main substance of his book, along with his exhaustive thoughts on pianos. It is a wonderful book, which I have followed through its previous versions and extensions, marvelling at its wealth of experience and perception.
Yet so far I have seen only one review of it, by Alan Rusbridger in The Guardian, which is not enough. Perhaps because it is a perfecting of something already written, reviewers have failed to see the point of reading or writing about it again. But every word counts, and that remains the book’s whole point, and in its Kindle edition it is much easier to handle than in book form, even if its many musical examples are inevitably harder to read and its omission of the word “flat” from flattened keys is a persistent irritation.
Yet reading the book makes you understand why he gave up public playing when he did because it will outlive him in conjunction with his recordings, which, as he says himself, should all be clearly dated, so that we know what position each of them holds in his long journey to Brendelian perfection.
Re-reading the book, alongside Simon Schama’s big new study of British portraiture, has made me extremely happy that good things continue to happen, even if I need some moments of light relief, such as Nina Stubbs’s memories of being a nanny for Mary Kaye Wilmers, editor of the London Review of Books, and her family, now out in a televised version written by Nick Hornby.
1 October 2015
His last performances were given some years ago now, the ne plus ultra a performance of Mozart’s E flat major Piano Concerto, K271, in Vienna with Sir Charles Mackerras as conductor, after which he retired from the concert platform.
The perfected version of his essays, entitled Music, Sense, and Nonsense, were published last month, and are comparable with, or I would now say preferable to, those of Donald Francis Tovey, which I devoured in my boyhood but feel that I have now outgrown, at least in the sense that I am unlikely to read them again.
But I am still reading, and re-reading, Brendel. He can be tough going, especially on the complete piano works of Beethoven, but he continues to be worth the overcoming of any obstacles he places in your path. He is witty, though less so than Tovey. He is a formidable authority on whatever he writes about. And he has his occasionally irritating foibles, such as his refusal to accept the vast, important repeated section in the first movement of Schubert’s last piano sonata, his failure to like Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, and his lack of enthusiasm for Chopin, in comparison with Liszt.
But on Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, in general, he is massively convincing, and happily they form the main substance of his book, along with his exhaustive thoughts on pianos. It is a wonderful book, which I have followed through its previous versions and extensions, marvelling at its wealth of experience and perception.
Yet so far I have seen only one review of it, by Alan Rusbridger in The Guardian, which is not enough. Perhaps because it is a perfecting of something already written, reviewers have failed to see the point of reading or writing about it again. But every word counts, and that remains the book’s whole point, and in its Kindle edition it is much easier to handle than in book form, even if its many musical examples are inevitably harder to read and its omission of the word “flat” from flattened keys is a persistent irritation.
Yet reading the book makes you understand why he gave up public playing when he did because it will outlive him in conjunction with his recordings, which, as he says himself, should all be clearly dated, so that we know what position each of them holds in his long journey to Brendelian perfection.
Re-reading the book, alongside Simon Schama’s big new study of British portraiture, has made me extremely happy that good things continue to happen, even if I need some moments of light relief, such as Nina Stubbs’s memories of being a nanny for Mary Kaye Wilmers, editor of the London Review of Books, and her family, now out in a televised version written by Nick Hornby.
1 October 2015
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