While I will be hauling out a few points of reference, this is
not a release which invites in-depth comparisons with alternative
recordings of the works programmed. Fans of Alfred Brendel, like
me, will want this as a last extra souvenir of that magic, a
little ‘more of same’, with the extra touch of poignancy
which goes with a ‘last of’ anything which is a bit
special, even a bit more than just special: something which has
been a part of our lives for longer than some of us can even
remember.
Alfred Brendel gives some interesting insights into his thoughts
on the pieces in this programme, but doesn’t really go
into why he selected them for his final concerts. A few brief
paragraphs at the beginning of the booklet show that Brendel’s
final appearances were planned well in advance, and that the
results of these recordings “bear out the fact that I was
right to stop concertising at a time when I was still in full
command, and still able to add something to my insights.” Brendel’s
own notes on the music are entitled “Surprises and Hidden
Secrets”, and I think this does give some sense as to why
these pieces were chosen. Each has that special ‘something’ which
is often an elusive quality which keeps bringing you back to
try and discover what this might be. As Brendel suggests with
mention of his “long courtship of Mozart’s Sonata
K 533/494 and the slow movement of K271”, these might be
secrets which elude you for a lifetime, which you might feel
you have approached on occasion, but after each performance can
never say ‘that was entirely
perfect.’
The choice of Mozart’s
“Jeunehomme” concerto
might seem a bit ironic in these circumstances, but as a ‘farewell’ piece
it certainly has plenty of atmosphere: the longing wistfulness
of that beautiful slow movement followed by a ‘welcome
the coming, speed the parting guest’ kind of gallop, full
of positive major tonality and a busy part for both orchestra
and soloist. It might be easy to become a bit misty-eyed about
such a recording, but for me this has all the fine qualities
of the best kind of Brendel/Mackerras live performance, filled
with subdued Mozartean energy. If this is not projected with
quite the lively qualities of Brendel’s earlier outing
with Neville Mariner released on Philips in the 1970s, then certainly
with as much if not more of the content in terms of depth. There
is a certain amount of audience noise, and Brendel’s own
vocalisations are also unmistakably present, but the sense of
occasion and emotional charge in the music more than make up
for any blemishes. I wonder what you make of the first piano
entry in that gorgeous slow movement by the way; 1:20 seconds
in? Surely not an edit between the first two notes? Maybe not
- I was convinced it was to start with, but the more I repeat
that moment the less I care either way.
Moving to the Hanover venue, and we are welcomed at once by a
much quieter milieu in terms of audience noise. Brendel’s
own voice does sound through, but he doesn’t sing in quite
the way Glenn Gould did or yell like Keith Jarrett, so listeners
should be grateful rather than irritated. Brendel sees Haydn
as the truly inventive pioneer we should all recognise these
days, pointing out the anarchic fantasy towards the end of the
otherwise fairly innocuous variations in the
Sonata in F minor.
Some passages from this if taken in isolation you might sooner
ascribe to someone like Liszt than Haydn, with some remarkable
chromatic gestures and ruminative, improvisatory sequences. CD
1 concludes with Mozart’s
Sonata for Piano no. 15 in
F major, K 533/494. Like the concerto which opens the disc,
the central
Andante dominates in terms of expressive power,
and Brendel wrings plenty of this from the music without losing
its fluid sense of motion and sense of creative joy - surprises
and hidden secrets indeed in all of those harmonic twists.
It is hard for me not to come to Beethoven’s
Sonata
for Piano no 13 in E flat major, Op. 27 no 1 without making
a comparison with that included in Brendel’s last complete
cycle (see
review).
The timings between each are almost identical, but in 1993 Brendel
was a little more fiery with his dynamics, a little more imposing
in the
Adagio con espressione. With a marginal softening
in approach comes more reflective lyricism however, and with
a lighter touch comes a slightly fleeter sense of forward movement
in the final
Allegro vivace. The live recording may have
something to do with some of the subtleties in difference, but
the bass definition in the piano is if anything even richer in
this more recent NDR Radio/Decca recording and no punches are
pulled in terms of dynamic kick. It is fascinating to compare
and contrast, but in the end there is a sense of safe familiarity
here. This is what one might expect when relating the recording
of an artist in his mature prime, and 15 years later in his final
public statement on a composer for whose interpretations the
name of Alfred Brendel will always be a reference of one sort
or another in our times and for a long time to come.
So we come to one of my favourite piano pieces of all time, Schubert’s
Sonata
for Piano in B flat major, D 960. Recorded live before and
previously heard for you
here on
these pages, the rather noisy 1997 Royal Festival Hall version
is again as near to this in terms of timings as makes little
difference, with only the final
Allegro, ma non troppo being
a little less headlong in terms of tempo. Whatever one’s
opinions on the two performances, the 2008 recording is much
better in terms of sound quality, the microphones much closer
to the piano and picking up less of what in any case sounds to
be a far less consumptive audience, and creating at once a warmer
and more detailed picture of Brendel’s take on this marvellous
music. This may have been Brendel’s final recital, but
he still refuses to take an extreme view of the second movement’s
Andante
sostenuto, whose opening material seems to invite static
expanses of protracted piano sound. Brendel hears the lyrical
lines in the longer phrases more than the silences and depths
which can, at risk, be plumbed by stretching the opening theme
to give a feel of infinity. The infinite for Brendel’s
Schubert is that which is expressed in the unsung words which
might go with this were it a
lied. The music breathes
on a human scale, and doesn’t impose post-Schubertian Stanley
Kubrick space-scapes, despite all of those ‘heavenly lengths’.
In terms of the dance and dark wit which Brendel gives to the
final two movements his reference to part of the Viennese character
in the booklet notes is revealing, quoting a saying that says “the
situation is hopeless, but not serious”. One of the last
bitter-sweet tastes of creative life for the young Schubert is
also one of the most important parts of Alfred Brendel’s
final draught of public performance, and for me such a parallel
forms the heart of this recital.
The final three pieces are listed as encores in the programme,
the penultimate tear-jerker being a fine and lyrically poetic
Schubert
Impromptu, D 899/Op. 90: no.3 in G flat major,
and, as he had also played in the Musikverein, Busoni’s
arrangement of Bach’s Chorale Prelude
Nun komm, der
Heiden Heiland. In the final reckoning, it is fitting that
J.S. Bach should have the last word, just as when, in Dylan Thomas’s
masterpiece
Under Milk Wood, Mrs. Organ Morgan asks Organ
Morgan: “Who do you like best. Organ?” and he replies, “Oh,
Bach without any doubt. Bach every time for me.”
I have but one complaint about this release, and that is that
the booklet is almost impossible to get at in the central ‘spine’ of
the otherwise elegantly presented gatefold digipack. Alfred Brendel’s
retirement is timely for us as well as for him. He has so clearly
said about as much as he feels he can say on these and the other
great works in his vast repertoire, and rightly does not want
to carry on into an undignified decline, correctly preferring
to “[look] forward to challenges of a different kind.” So,
as you brush away a tear, rejoice in the legacy of one of the
great pianists of our time and make sure you have a copy of these
his final public concerts on your shelf. As Mrs. CD Reviewer
said to Mr. CD Reviewer, “Oh stop weeping man, you can
play the things more than once you know.”
Dominy Clements
Alfred Brendel (piano) 
