Alfred Brendel was born in the former Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic in 1931. He took his first piano lessons at the age of six and his first public recital at age 17. In 1949, he won fourth place in the prestigious Busoni Competition in Bolzano, Italy. It was enough to launch his career as a performing musician.
Brendel made his first recordings during the 1950s. During the 1960s, he became the first pianist ever to record the entire piano works of Beethoven. From 1982 to 1983, he presented cycles of all 32 Sonatas in the course of 77 recitals in 11 cities throughout Europe and America. He was the first pianist since Artur Schnabel to play the complete Beethoven Sonatas at Carnegie Hall. He repeated this accomplishment around the world during the 1990s and completed a third recorded cycle of all the Beethoven Sonatas in 1996.
In 1998, Brendel was made an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic, sharing this distinction with only two other pianists before him. In 1999, Carnegie Hall invited him to be the musician-in-residence. He retired from the concert stage in 2008.
Brendel is known for his masterly interpretations of the works of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms and Liszt. He has also published collections of poetry and several collections of articles and lectures including Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts published in 1976 and Music Sounded Out published in 1990.
Brendel delivered the Beatty Lecture on October 15, 2011, titled "Does Classical Music Have to be Entirely Serious?" He illustrated his talk, delivered in the Schulich School of Music’s Pollack Hall, with passages on the piano.
Images: Owen Egan
