Alfred Brendel quotes

Alfred Brendel is an Austrian pianist, poet, and author renowned for his interpretations of classical and romantic repertoire. His performances of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt are considered among the finest of the twentieth century. He is also widely respected for his insightful writings and lectures on music and art. Here are 7 of his quotes:

If I belong to a tradition, it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what to do, and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed.

Alfred Brendel

The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent'.

Alfred Brendel

Those who look for contradictions will be amply satisfied. The profession of a performer is full of paradoxes, and he has to learn to live with them. He has to forget himself and control himself; he has to observe the composer's wishes to the letter and create the music on the spot; he has to be part of the music market and yet retain his integrity.

Alfred Brendel

Edwin Fischer was, on the concert platform, a short, leonine, resilient figure, whose every fiber seemed to vibrate with elemental musical power. Wildness and gentleness were never far from each other in his piano-playing, and demonic outbursts would magically give way to inner peace. It was as little trouble to him (as Alfred Polgar once said of an actor) to lose himself as to find himself. His playing of slow movements was full of an unselfconsciousness beside which the music-making of others, famous names included, seemed academic or insincere. With Fischer, one was in more immediate contact with the music: there was no curtain before the soul when he communicated with the audience. One other musician, Furtwangler, conveyed to the same degree this sensation of music not being played, but rather happening by itself.

Alfred Brendel

I am accountable to the composer, but I am also there to communicate something to the listener. I am not delivering a soliloquy, but am somewhere in the middle.

Alfred Brendel

Hearing has its own memory. It registers the dog whose sudden barking startled me as a child. The folk songs my nanny used to sing. The dadaism of a cabaret song from Berlin: ‘I tear out one of my eyelashes and stab you dead with it,' innocently sung by my mother. Hitler conjuring up the Almighty. The crowing voice of little Goebbels. Alarm sirens, the roar of aircraft, the blast of bombs. Ljuba Welitsch being Salome. The sonorities of Edwin Fischer's piano playing. María Casares as Lady Macbeth in Avignon. Ralph Kirkpatrick's two Scarlatti recitals. Gré Brouwenstijn as Leonore in Fidelio. The epiphany of Ligeti's Aventures et Nouvelles Aventures. The magic application of noise in Peter Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream. All sorts of laughter.

Alfred Brendel