Alfred Brendel 1931-2025

[richardfinegold]

https://youtu.be/YdSv5QT76ko?si=r0dFY1My5-GW_OLk

Hurwitz argues that Brendel was a good pianist that had a career that was disproportionately large due to his talented management company

[Petrushka]

https://youtu.be/YdSv5QT76ko?si=r0dFY1My5-GW_OLk

Hurwitz argues that Brendel was a good pianist that had a career that was disproportionately large due to his talented management company

Also that he recorded the same pieces over and over again, like Karajan. There's no denying this but whether that's good or bad is open to debate (in both cases).

[french frank]

Also that he recorded the same pieces over and over again, like Karajan. There's no denying this but whether that's good or bad is open to debate (in both cases).

As a musical numpty I didn't comment earlier. But my opinion is that Mr Hurwittz (his friends call him Dave) may or may not actually like classical music: he just likes to rile people who do. I am willing to listen to anyone who disagrees.

My limited experience would only enable me to comment that in the recording of the Trout quintet which I gave to my nephew (in the hope ...), the piano was a bit forward for my taste for reasons I do understand. After 30 years I'm not even sure which version it was: I'm sure Mr Hurwitz would tell me it could have been literally thousands, all with Brendel..

[smittims]

I think people who just listen to music (which, to be fair, is most of us) don't always understand how much time and effort goes into learning a major work, and how reasonable ,therefore , it is to keep playing it again and again to search for more revelations. Herbert himself said of interpretative aspects of some works 'it takes years to achieve this'. I don't begrudge Brendel's playing the same few Mozart or Schubert sonatas repeatedly. It's easy for an armchair critic to want something different all the time , but this can be served by the many available recordings of lesser works .

There's nothing new about concentrating on a small repertoire. Felix Weingartner preferred to repeat three or four Beethoven symphonies and had to be persuaded to complete the set. Clifford Curzon hardly ever played a Beethoven sonata and I think no Chopin at all. Brendel did occasionally play less-well-known Liszt and the Schoenberg concerto and Karajan did do Webern, Carl Orff and even Monteverdi. They're just not among their most frequently-reissued recordings. .

[Petrushka]

As a musical numpty I didn't comment earlier. But my opinion is that Mr Hurwittz (his friends call him Dave) may or may not actually like classical music: he just likes to rile people who do. I am willing to listen to anyone who disagrees.

My limited experience would only enable me to comment that in the recording of the Trout quintet which I gave to my nephew (in the hope ...), the piano was a bit forward for my taste for reasons I do understand. After 30 years I'm not even sure which version it was: I'm sure Mr Hurwitz would tell me it could have been literally thousands.

Having watched a good number of his videos, in all fairness DH does like classical music and has an encyclopedic knowledge of recordings. It's just that his more forward American manner, sloppy pronunciation and occasional strange anti-UK bias, trashing of Simon Rattle and other oddities are unlikely to endear him to many on here. There is no doubting his knowledge of classical music, though and if you can get passed the downsides mentioned I can still recommend.

Incidentally, I have a very strong suspicion that he has been on this Forum from something he once said on one of his videos. More details available on request if anyone is interested.

[smittims]

Yes I think he does know about music and recordings, but, like many enthusiasts for minority interests, he also likes showing off his knowledge to others who, he thinks, don't know.

It involves a desire to be seen to be right. I've noticed this with fundamentalist Christians, some of whom I think were fundamentaists first and Christians second.

[french frank]

Yes I think he does know about music and recordings, but, like many enthusiasts for minority interests, he also likes showing off his knowledge to others who, he thinks, don't know.

I'll accept that he is knowledgeable, but also think that knowledgeable people are more likely to be opinionated and feel they are in possession of the truth which it is their duty to propagate.

I had to sit down and think about that particular Trout quintet and decided that my feeling stemmed from a personal preference for small-scale chamber works. I like a duet with piano and one other instrument, but when it gets to piano trios, quartets, quintets, for my taste the piano tends to be too dominant even if (perhaps especially if) the pianist is Brendel. But De gustibus ...

[vinteuil]

...my feeling stemmed from a personal preference for small-scale chamber works. I like a duet with piano and one other instrument, but when it gets to piano trios, quartets, quintets, for my taste the piano tends to be too dominant even if (perhaps especially if) the pianist is Brendel ...

..,. one of the many advantages of using a piano of the period of the composition is that they are less likely to dominate like this.

Sadly, Alfred Brendel was never really sympathetic to the 'Historically Informed' approach. A great shame

.

[smittims]

I think he was right to keep to modern pianos, as they are better able to reveal the subtle depths of the misic, where he was an expert. I felt this just now listening to the middle movement of the Bach 2-violin concerto played in what sounded to me like an unfeeling and insensitive performance by the Akademie fur alte Musik. I think people (such as the R3 presenter this morning) praise 'period ' performances automatically , as if the mere use of a period instruent guarantees a better perfomrance. That this is simply not so was demonstrated in the previous piece played by Heifetz, Rubinstein and Piatigorsky, whose revelations in the music they played were so much better-served by the modern instruments they played.

Similarly, I was listening earlier this morning to Mozart's B flat symphony (K319) played by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Mravinsky at the Festival Hall in 1960. Even granted that they didn't have access to top-quality instruments this was afar more vigorous, humanly-alive rendering than any period perfirmance I've heard, and I think closer to Mozart's own spirit and persionality. As with Brendel, it's the performer who makes the performance, not the instrument .

But, to return to Mr Hurwitz and his knowledge, I agree with ff in that knowledgeable people in minority areas (such as classical music) tend to be more bullish in forcing their opinions, adm I wonder if this is more acceptable in the USA than here . I well recall a man who insisted (getting quite heated and even abusive) when I corrected his insistence that those two large Schubert Lieder boxes (Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore) in the 1970s were EMI recordings. What a pity we cant just get on better, especially today.

[Belgrove]

Sadly, Alfred Brendel was never really sympathetic to the 'Historically Informed' approach. A great shame.

In Brendel’s ‘The veil of order: Conversations with Martin Meyer’, he regards playing on period instruments to be ’a fundamental error’ (without revealing why).

[french frank]

In Brendel’s ‘The veil of order: Conversations with Martin Meyer’, he regards playing on period instruments to be ’a fundamental error’ (without revealing why).

If one calls something a "fundamental error" that does require a reasoned argument. Explaining why, as a performer, you wouldn't want to do so would also be good - without implying that those who took an alternative view were wrong.

[richardfinegold]

I think Petrushka has Hurwitz pegged. He does love music and many performers who are his favorites. He is familiar with a great many recordings but as a professional reviewer he has an obligation to be so. He has strong dislikes. Amongst them are HIP and British Parochialism, and those views won’t win him many friends on this Forum.

He is an entertainer. There are many boring YT videos out there with sober minded presenters and DH is much more fun to watch while simultaneously being enlightening. Personality wise he is what my parents use to call a “New York Jew”-opionated, brash, and loud. He leavens this with humor, as opposed to someone like Bernie Sanders.

He is an academic who has written articles on vibrato. I think the fact that he has some academic credentials irritates his detractors because he has some credibility.

For all his professed dislike of HIP he seems to be familiar with a lot of it. He likes JEG, occasionally praises Hogwood and Pinnock. He hates a lot of HIP dogmatism so Norrington come in for special abuse. He intensely dislikes Jordi Savall, which I disagree with .

Regarding British Parochialism I think he is right about Rattle, but I don’t expect Forumites to agree. He also trashes Goodall but seems okay with Boult and Barbirolli, as well as John Wilson and Gardner.

As Petrushka indicates he is critical of Brendel (and Karajan) for recording the same repertoire repeatedly. Karajan at least seemed to evolve his interpretations over time-not always for the better. Brendel’s Beethoven had his biggest evolution from Vox to PhillipsI. After listening to most of the big Brendel box, his subsequent Beethoven cycles are a bit of wash, rinse, repeat. Hurwitz praises Brendel’s Liszt.

Hurwitz isn’t terribly consistent intellectually. He unfavorably compares Brendel to Kempff, but Kempff I think had at least as many recorded Beethoven cycles as Brendel (although greater variability in the results).

[smittims]

I think that's fair. Dave Hurwitz has never irritated me. I accept him for what he is.

[vinteuil]

I think that's fair. Dave Hurwitz has never irritated me. I accept him for what he is.

... well, we try to accept you for who you are, after all

[smittims]

But you don't know who I am, whereas we do know who Dave Hurwitz is.