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The 94-year-old piano master passed away. He chose this piece as his "encore" to leave to the world.
Published:
2025-06-19
On June 17th, the Austrian piano master Alfred Brendel passed away at his home in London at the age of 94.
Although he has been away from the stage for seventeen years, as one of the most influential pianists in the international music scene since the second half of the 20th century, his departure has left his peers and music fans deeply saddened, with many lamentation over the loss of such a great pianist.
Mr. Yin Chengzong, a renowned pianist, has listened to Brendel's performances live on multiple occasions over the past 30-plus years. Among them, Brendel's performance of Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 in d Minor left the deepest impression on him. Deep down, he is powerful and sincere in his emotions. In his performance, the structure is rigorous and unmatched. I have learned so much from him.
There is no doubt that Brendel was an outstanding interpreter of German-Austrian works in this era. His brilliant understanding and performance of the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and others stem from his natural talent, but more importantly, from his comprehensive and profound reflection on the creative background and ideological connotations of the works. Even for works that he is all too familiar with, as long as there is an opportunity to perform them, it is a brand new start for him.
When it comes to music, Brendel always tries all kinds of possibilities with a selfless dedication. Whether at the concert or in the record recording, once Brendel's fingers come into close contact with the black and white keys, just by listening to the first few bars of the work, you will know what a perfect musical experience awaits us next.
When the news of Brendel's death came, I found that set of "Farewell Concert" which I had watched many times before and revisited it. The two concerts included in this album are a solo concert in Hanover on December 14, 2008, and his collaboration with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra on Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major at the "Golden Hall". This is a live recording of the last two concerts in Brendel's long artistic career, which is of extraordinary significance.
Brandle once said, "This marks the end of my performing career. I had planned these two farewell concerts in advance. I have always enjoyed taking on challenges from different things and am looking forward to my final performance with a calm heart." Perhaps it was a coincidence that from his first solo concert in his hometown of Graz in 1948 to his farewell performance at the end of 2008, the master's stage career had exactly spanered six decades.
The four works that appeared at the Hanover recital were Haydn's Variations in f Minor, Mozart's Sonata No. 9 in F Major, Beethoven's Sonata No. 13 in E-flat Major and Schubert's Sonata in B-flat Major, and these four composers happened to accompany Brendel throughout his entire artistic career. Perhaps the master is also well aware that in people's minds, his name will always be closely associated with these German and Austrian composers.
For Brendel, each work has its own rules, and when performing, one must think along with the composer. This was also the artistic principle he followed throughout his life, and it was no exception even in this last solo concert. As always, he endows these works with new life through his acute sense of timbre and in-depth analysis of their connotations. At the same time, he faithfully presents the original musical character of these works and always controls some emotions that stem from himself.
Rarely performing adaptations, he chose Busoni's arrangement of Bach's "Chant Prelude" as the final piece "Encore" of the concert, as if to tell the music fans that his life after retirement would be as peaceful as the music here.
Four days later, Brendel reserved his true farewell moment for his beloved: Mozart's vigorous Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major. He called this work "a fantasy of the world". In his opinion, the melody here is both full of the vigor and vitality of the youth and brimming with the composure and wisdom of the elderly. Although his performance still pays great attention to depicting the unique drama in Mozart's music, and the combination of reason and humor runs through the piano sound all the time, compared with the past, his performance here has more of a sense of returning to simplicity.
Nowadays, although Brendel has bid us farewell, his piano music and artistic concepts will not fade away with him. The rich audio-visual materials he recorded throughout his life and the numerous works he wrote will eventually become the precious wealth he left to future generations and have a lasting impact in the future.