Vlad Vexler interviewed about Alfred Brendel

Рет қаралды 6,593

Күн бұрын

Pianist Alfred Brendel retired in 2008. What can we learn from his extraordinary evolution as a musician?
In this video I explore Alfred Brendel's last years on the platform as well as what his playing would have been like in an alternate universe, in which artists list 110 years.
I also talk about conception and interpretation in classical music. Along the way, I touch on Edwin Fischer, Alfred Cortot, Artur Schnabel, Kit Armstrong and others.
I thank musician Sila Blume for facilitating the event which made this video possible.
silablume.life/2022/01/05/the...
CHAPTERS
00:00 Welcome to my video about Alfred Brendel
00:20 How would Alfred Brendel like to die?
00:23 How Alfred Brendel decided to retire
01:12 Why was Brendel's retirement happy?
01:28 Why was Brendel's retirement tragic?
02:45 Brendel's most amazing quality
03:15 When should a great pianist stop playing? Alfred Brendel vs Edwin Fischer & Alfred Cortot.
04:45 Alfred Brendel recording Mozart sonata K533/494
06:18 Many masterpieces have never been played well.
07:11 What performers know that composers don't
09:38 Masterpieces greater than they can be played! (Schnabel)
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ALFRED BRENDEL BEST RECORDINGS (a sample based on Alfred's own preferences)
Alfred Brendel Mozart sonata K533/494 Mozart sonata (Nov 2008 - this is the only adequate reading of this sonata in the history of recorded sound)
• Mozart: Piano Sonata N...
Andantino from Mozart piano concerto K271 (Dec 2008 - the greatest reading of the Andantino on record, from Brendel's last night on the platform
• Mozart: Piano Concerto...
Alfred Brendel - Schubert impromptu D935/1 (2007 - the best reading of Schubert's greatest Impromtu)
The two discs to look out for are -
* Alfred Brendel: A Birthday Tribute
* Alfred Brendel: Previously unpublished live recordings
* Alfred Brendel: Farewell Concert
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My video on Mozart's piano sonata K533/494 -
• PLAYING MOZART PIANO S...
My video on how Alfred Brendel's style when he was young and old -
• ALFRED BRENDEL YOUNG A...
These and the current videos are tiny Alfred Brendel portraits. I hope to share a long version in the future.
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My line: 'Interpretation entails loss - that is a conceptual truth' is a recasting of Artur Schnabel's famous line 'masterpieces which are greater than they can be played' into the voice of Isaiah Berlin. Berlin used to say that conflict of values and incommensurability of value were a conceptual truth.
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Пікірлер: 42

@VladVexler 2 жыл бұрын

I'm wishing you a flourishing and safe 2022! It's great to be back after almost two months! Health allowing, we have regular content resumed now! My video on Mozart's piano sonata K533/494 - kzfaq.info/get/bejne/aJ-CYNthvZbLdZc.html My video on how Alfred Brendel's style when he was young and old - kzfaq.info/get/bejne/l62okteBqbXPfKs.html Both videos contain important ideas, but they are older and badly produced.

@yishihara55527 Жыл бұрын

"Along the way, I touch on Edwin Fischer, Alfred Cortot, Artur Schnabel, Kit Armstrong and others."

@alexander11194 8 ай бұрын

You're utterly brilliant. As a classical musician myself, I've never heard nobody talking at this depth. Best regards.

@irabraus9478 Жыл бұрын

How rare to have a synoptic sense of one's artistic evolution! Brendel is a miracle.

@johnpipkin7198 Жыл бұрын

This is a very wise, very thoughtful, and very well informed discussion. Thank you so much !

@Alexagrigorieff Жыл бұрын

Starting in 1995, I've been traveling for business from Moscow to the US. In my free time, I went to Best Buy near my hotel to browse classical CDs. Those days there was quite good choice of them. I bought a few CDs of Alfred Brendel playing Beethoven, that's how I become familiar with maestro Brendel's art. My first impression was that these performances sounded absolutely convincing, that's how Beethoven should sound. Those were mostly recordings from 1960s and 1970s. Over a few such trips, I gathered more of Brendel's recordings. In 2006 (I think?) I had a pleasure of listening to Maestro Brendel playing Diabelli Variations in Los Angeles (still old concert hall?).

@hififlipper Жыл бұрын

Best regards from Vienna my friend. Thank you for another gem of your illustrations.

@musiqueetmontagne 2 жыл бұрын

Great video and topic Vlad, thank you. I adore much of Brendel's playing, technique and interpretation. Wonderful.

@VladVexler 2 жыл бұрын

My pleasure, much more on Alfred to come!!

@musiqueetmontagne 2 жыл бұрын

That's exciting, can't wait..

@quecksilber457 Жыл бұрын

Oh that is absolutely great. I was already very impressed after i found you quite recently (two or three months ago). Now i am digging deeper into your content and now that. I am a big fan of Brendel, mainly because of Schuberts Winterreise with Fischer-Dieskau. Now hearing you talking about another topic i am really interested in is absolutely mindblowing. Thanks a lot!

@carolynwheeler8475 Жыл бұрын

This is a fascinating commentary on Brendel. Even though Brendel has coached Kit Armstrong, he is still evolving. To me there is absolutely no pianist that can touch the soul as he does and it has to do with him personally and how he approaches his own talent.

@chrisgoff6544 11 ай бұрын

Dear Vlad , I hope you have caught young Alexandra Dovgan's recent recital from Verbier ,as I know you are an admirer .

@VladVexler 11 ай бұрын

Thank you haven’t listened to all of it yet. She’s in a very delicate developmental stage which rather asks the impossible from the folks guiding her.

@etucker82 2 жыл бұрын

I was at Brendel's last performance in the US, during which he played it too. Brendel is very nearly my favorite pianist and it was a truly wonderful performance from which I remember so many details, but op. 533/494 can be approached from a number of different rubrics. For me, Aldo Ciccolini was the truest master of it. K. 533/494 has quicksilver, almost barbed wit Brendel's more gemutlich approach is not quite interested in capturing. The approach is well-nigh perfect for Schubert, and Schubert's final three sonatas have never been done better. I disagree that one has to form an approach that gains through emphasis while consciously deciding to lose other elements. If a piece is truly internalized, then there is, first of all, an unconscious spontaneous process in each performance by which a performer decides what to emphasize at that moment without even thinking of what is lost. Secondly, a great performance has multiplicity of perspective, and there is always a tension between the piece's various elements. Mozart is, to me, above all an ironist, a Rousseau in music. Not only an 18th century composer but from the very end of the century. We think of Mozart as all powdered wigs, and in many ways, but to me, the sheer number of dynamic contrasts scores clearly indicate that he hated that world, and however often he is the sweet, Dresden doll, he always upsets expectations. The greatest Mozart performances have a hint of the guillotine.

@forestlittke4649 2 жыл бұрын

I enjoy all of your commentaries regardless of music or politics etc.😁

@VladVexler 2 жыл бұрын

That’s quite something!! Going forward I will be putting the more in depth music videos on the separate music channel.

@rubinsteinway 2 жыл бұрын

Definitely one of your better vids. Just some knee-jerk reactions here. Speaking as a composer (and pianist) yes the performer spends more time with the pieces than does the composer in most cases, but this is because it takes the performer longer to understand what the composer meant. Especially if the composer himself didn't fully realize what his music meant. Humanity spends centuries (sometimes) in the process of understanding. Add to this the inexactitude of composition. We think we're improving it if we give more direction to the performer but Bach wrote virtually nothing, except of course the music. I find it more enjoyable to break my own "rules" but other performers don a straightjacket and play the directions instead of the music. The best performers (in the entertainment sense) break some rules, the audience claps loudly, and maybe later the performer atones for his sins. Forgive my nonsense. 🙂

@VladVexler 2 жыл бұрын

David thank you. I think I agree with it all. Even with performers atoning for sins - I often insist on being agnostic about younger performers who take many liberties. Let's see how they develop and judge them when they are 60 not 30. Hope 2022 is going well for you.

@markoslavicek 2 жыл бұрын

"We have to believe in some very fundamental features of human nature." - Foucault disapproves 😁 Nice to see you back and feeling better 🍻

@VladVexler 2 жыл бұрын

Not as much as Derrida disapproves! 🍷

@williamfrost3554 2 жыл бұрын

It's excellent to see you again and relatively healthy. I hate to be a bother so quickly after your return, but I would like to ask a few questions. I am interested in space and some interpretive actualities and notions in regards to art, ritual processes and to a certain extent cognition, though to be honest I have never understood the term "cognition" nor do I have a term that would aid my understanding. At any rate, what is space in music? How would one go about defining space in this context? I suppose this would leave the final question, what is empty space? Thank you for your uploads once gain, they are always a treat.

@VladVexler 2 жыл бұрын

So. I think David Hume said that if you want to imagine nothing start by taking away one thing at a time. If by cognitive we mean conscious intellectual activity and conscious knowledge, my argument in this video is that artistic intention is not that, because it is unconscious. If by cognitive we mean being apt to be true or false, apt for objective evaluation, then that's a different matter. I think there is a good deal of objectivity to what an artist's intention is, as well as objectivity about the aesthetic quality of what the artist does. With collective ritual one difference will be that we may need an explanation at the level of the individual but also an explanation at (something like) a collective level. I plan a video on this. The empty space I refer to in the video is really a very boring simple usage - I just mean that the qualities of the piece aren't brought to life. We are getting a drone view instead of an experience of walking through a territory. That might answer 10% of what you ask??

@williamfrost3554 2 жыл бұрын

@@VladVexler Thank you for your response. I am ignorant when it comes to Hume, but it seems like I would have a hard time "imagining nothing" maybe it is similar to the concern he had/has with causality. Do we "imagine nothing" or do we imagine the process toward "nothing"? I am probably way off, but the distinction you made between different cognitive spaces reminds me of what I would call a Chomsky-De Saussure dichotomy [innateness "vs" external information] or perhaps something similar can be found within the volumes that deal with rationalism and empiricism? I am sure there are holes in this comparison as I am trying piece things together on the fly. It would be great to hear your views on ritual and music. I noticed you have a video about what makes religious music religious. I will watch it. I think I can get an impression of what you are getting at when you refer to empty space. The other day I was listening to a "generic recording" or at least it felt "generic" to me then compared it to the Busch recordings. The "generic" one felt like a Warhol print and the Bush recordings felt like a Caravaggio, Goltzius or even Blake in where every corner is filled with air and varying shades of light.

@FABrendel 2 жыл бұрын

Interesting topics here, Vlad. Wondering what's your take on piano technique?

@VladVexler 2 жыл бұрын

I think Alfred himself joked once about an edition of the Grove music dictionary that began an entry on piano playing: ‘from a practical point of view’! As though there are impractical aspects of piano playing. There is a video in this. I have a very strong view on this. Which is to almost never practice technique outside an expressive context. I was drilled as a child in the Soviet Union to separate technique from expression at first, and then attach them together. This is what you were taught at the leading music institutions. And, I believe you hear this when you listen to Russian pianists. I’m completely against it. I’m against piano practice basically. I do accept there are exceptions. More to come on this!

@FABrendel 2 жыл бұрын

@@VladVexler indeed! There is a very interesting answer Brendel himself gives to David Dubal in one of his conversations series which is in line with what you say.

@VladVexler 2 жыл бұрын

@@FABrendel episode coming up on this! Edwin Fischer was utterly remarkable in what he asked of students - he made extremely psychological requests for contact with the keys. About opus 111 Arietta he’d say - apply ‘a touch so dematerialised as to not be of the world’. For him technique ultimately was produced by an unconscious psychological state.

@1alexanderwalker Жыл бұрын

I enjoyed this very much. I would be interested in your thoughts on Lydia Goehr's viewpoint as expressed in "The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works". I know that this has helped me to re-evaluate a bit my view on what exactly "the work" is and the relationship between performance and notated score. I absolutely concur with view, but I am aware that my view seems to many in the academic world a bit old-fashioned.

@1alexanderwalker Жыл бұрын

p.s. I last met Brendel in the Grand Hotel in St. Petersburg in the late 1990s. He was somewhat irritable after a rehearsal of the Emperor Concerto with Gergiev for the White Nights Festival.....

@philippeyared2050 Жыл бұрын

Excellent. As are your videos on the Kremlin zero

@danielwaitzman2118 2 жыл бұрын

Bravo!-and welcome back. You are a Platonist, I’m happy to observe. Of my own efforts at composition, I sometimes play back what I have written, and think, “How the HELL did I do that? There have been times when I have felt like a musical transmitter, as much as like a creator. I do believe that, for practical purposes at least, there IS a God, in which an infinity of musical expression resides. There can be no all-encompassing performance; nor can the composer necessarily say that a piece is finished. And, given the godhood of Man, imprisoned in his mortal animal body, I say that the lifespan of the individual ought to be not 110 years, but lazy 8.

@VladVexler 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you Dan. I am sympathetic to all you say and still look forward to taking time with your work. The philosopher Bernard Williams, who was very involved with opera in the UK, penned a compelling essay about immortality when he was young. Don't take time to read! Just sharing so you can have a look. Wishing you health. www3.nd.edu/~pweithma/Readings/Williams/Williams%20on%20Immortality.pdf

@vz6365 Жыл бұрын

It’s a lovely comment from you, Daniel. As a historian, I have the same experience of getting job done extra-ordinarily while feeling it’s beyond my intelligence. There is a God.

@paulquanbeck4982 2 жыл бұрын

What do you think of Ronald Brautigam's recording of Beethoven's piano sonatas for BIS?

@VladVexler 2 жыл бұрын

I admire it. I also particularly admire period readings by Andreas Staier. What's good about our time is that period performance and modern piano performance have become BOTH AND rather than EITHER OR. The latter was a bit toxic, and the modern piano would inevitably win the context because it can sing like the composers asked.

@paulquanbeck4982 2 жыл бұрын

Great points. Thanks for the reply, Vlad. I always enjoy and appreciate your insights.

@danyelnicholas 2 жыл бұрын

I challenge the statement (unsubstantiated by evidence other than the performer spends more time with a piece) that anybody would be in the position ever to find out the subtle dispositions of people like Schubert or Brahms. Remember the story of CPE Bach about his father casting a fleeting glance on a sheet of contrapuntal derivations the former had prepared and seeing with one glance all options that CPE had brooded over for hours on end. Art is like that, if you learned music as thoroughly as Couperin, Haydn or Mendelssohn outsiders (modern people banging away on modern grand pianos for ages) will never, with no amount of scrutiny fathom the bottom of imagination involved in the composition. With that I do in fact entirely agree with you that great compositions are "overdetermining" interpretation. If Moses would come back and claim a certain interpretation of a mizwa as the only proper one he would rightly be refuted by many great Rabbis---but that is in the nature of the text, not that of the author.

@VladVexler 2 жыл бұрын

Thanks so much for your words. I see what you are saying and I don't. It's not quite clear which of many possible points you are making. Here is an elementary sketch of the assumption underneath what I say in this presentation about Alfred- 1.The artist has a psychological state 2. That's expressed via a certain mode, whether marks on a canvass or notes on a page 3. 2 causes the initiated spectator/listener to have a certain experience; the experience the artist intended them to have And another qualification. I am not talking about understanding Schubert or Brahms, I am talking about understanding a piece, that has a degree of independence from the author. The independence is partly guaranteed by 1 necessarily being unconscious when it comes to great art. This basic sketch I think would be approved by Richard Wollheim. Pretty much anything I say about art on this channel takes the above to be not just true, but necessarily true if art traditions are to persist at all.

@danyelnicholas 2 жыл бұрын

@@VladVexler I agree that the composer is not automatically the one who knows best. But he is in a favourable position. Take Brendel, however long he has pondered over Mozart, he will never know how Mozart's instrument sounded at the time. Our historical experience is very limited. Unlike the late Badura-Skoda, Brendel has chosen a position or utter ignorance regarding historical performance practice. That is a severe draw back to his interpretation. If you don't learn Hebrew, how do you even start trying to understand Moshe, let alone leave him behind? I am not saying its impossible to understand the Mizwot better then Moshe, but you have to start by reconstructing the historical horizon he articulated the Law in, study Hammurabi 𒄩𒄠𒈬𒊏𒁉 etc....

@militaryandemergencyservic3286 Жыл бұрын

alfred brendel does not play what Schubert wrote in eg his d960 and klavierstucke 1 and 2. Therefore he is the WORST Schubert interpreter in my opinion - and that of many others.