SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Alfred Brendel plays  Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert: The Sage, Newcastle/Gateshead, UK 20.4.2008 (JL)

Haydn:  Variations in F minor HOB XVII/6
Mozart:  Piano Sonata in F major K533/K494
Beethoven:  Piano Sonata no.13  in E flat 'quasi una fantasia' op.27 no.1
Schubert:  Sonata for Piano no.21 in Bflat D960


This is the year Alfred Brendel will retire from the concert hall. Eulogies have appeared everywhere including  some unlikely places, for example in the US Men's Vogue magazine. The  77 year old London domiciled but quintessential central European pianist  will, appropriately, be taking his final  bow in December at Vienna's  Musikverein in the country where his beloved Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven all settled and died.

This Sage recital consisted of works by these four composers arranged in chronological order. Beginning with Haydn’s Variations, it was possible to understand why Brendel has championed the composer’s neglected piano music. Haydn has a reputation for wit and lightness of touch but this minor key work has gravitas in equal measure. Brendel took us through it with his particular skill of both pointing and blending the contrasts in a work that covers a wide range of emotional ground.  Haydn subtitled the piece, published as a sonata, “un piccolo divertimento”, which, given what Brendel had offered us, must be one of the composer’s piccolo jokes.

The Mozart sonata is a surprisingly lengthy piece which contains elements of experimentation in terms of harmony, texture and expansive structure. The startling counterpoint in the first movement betrays the fact the Mozart had just been arranging Bach keyboard fugues for string ensemble. In these passages Brendel’s  exceptional subtlety in bringing out passing melodic moments within complex textures, seamlessly  tossing the interest from one part of the keyboard to another, was supreme.

The Beethoven sonata is not one of the most played but being Beethoven it gets much more of an airing than the Haydn and Mozart pieces. It is one of the composer's works that begins inauspiciously without rhetoric but builds into a concise (shorter than the Mozart sonata) yet wide ranging composition.  It has a personal contemplative quality not so much found in his earlier works and Brendel turned the opening music with characteristic immaculately phrased limpidity. Nevertheless the music contains the aggressive, thumping chords redolent of the restless young man: over thump them and the piece is wrecked (I’ve heard it done so by modern young tigers of the keyboard). There is no danger of that from Brendel but it is not easy to accommodate the contrasts within this work that plays without a break, and maintain balanced, structural integrity. It is true that some might prefer Brendel to unleash more Beethovenian aggression,  but any sense of restraint is not a function of the pianist’s age but of an interpretation that derives from a lifelong contemplation of Beethoven's works.

So ended the first half of this recital consisting of three pieces that might have taxed the stamina of a much younger pianist. Not only that, but there was hardly a break between them since Brendel is not one to hang about. He has a habit of quickly bowing, walking off then coming straight back on and launching into the next piece before fully settled in his seat and sometimes before applause has had time to stop. And the most taxing piece was still to come.

I find it difficult to approach Schubert’s last great sonata with objectivity. To me it has a pathos to it which may derive from extraneous knowledge. Together with the String Quintet it was the last substantial work Schubert composed before his death which was about two months later at the age of 31. In between, ironically, he made a pilgrimage to Haydn’s grave. So the sonata   has a feeling of swansong about it. This is compounded by a memory I have of watching on TV  a late night, special  tribute BBC transmission of the great Schubert exponent Clifford Curzon playing the work. He had died that day. I found it unbearable moving.

The first movement is a heavenly string of melody lasting around a quarter of an hour. Pianists are often tempted to give the main opening tune, which is deceptively simple with its step-wise movement, an over expressive rendering that can cause loss of momentum from the start. Another trap is to over emphasise the bass trills that supply a quiet, emotionally disturbing undercurrent. Doing that destabilises the steady, progressive flow of the music. Brendel would never fall prey to these temptations for you can hear that his eye is on the broader picture, starting steadily and building the movement with perfect judgement to offer a powerful cumulative experience. He is not as slow as many pianists, particularly the late Sviatislav Richter who many regard as great Schubertian in spite of some characteristic eccentricities. Brendel’s way is not necessarily the best way for some, but everything is in perfect place for an interpretation that is exactly as he wants it and the result is a performance which for many carries with it unsurpassed integrity. When I got home I listened to his recording  of 37 yeas ago and the interpretation, including tempi, is very much the same; so we had the privilege of hearing a rendering that has been gently honed over  much of Brendel’s career.

At the end of the sonata, the elderly pianist  having taken the last movement pretty fast (faster than Richter who you might expect to go for speed), there followed the only spontaneous standing ovation I’ve ever experienced in a concert hall. It stared at the front and rippled back like a Mexican wave.  Brendel responded with two encores: Bach followed by Liszt’s Au lac de Wallenstadt.  The latter ends with a brief, quiet note; just a single ping of a sound. This may seem fanciful but I was persuaded that no other pianist could ping that note with such exquisiteness.

John Leeman


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