Farewell to Brendel

Pianist Alfred Brendel had been a presence on the world’s concert stages for around fifty years before his retirement in December last year.  He chose to bow out with the music that meant the most to him and which has inspired him throughout his long career - Mozart, Haydn, Bach, Beethoven and Schubert.

Now Decca has issued a recording of those farewell concerts comprising a concerto performance with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and a farewell recital given in Hanover.  Astonishingly, Brendel’s playing remains as fresh and newly minted as ever particularly in a rapt and intense performance of the great Schubert B flat major Sonata D960.  I can’t remember ever having heard him give a deeper or more satisfying rendition of it.  Equally as intense and possibly even more moving are two of the encores -  Schubert’s G flat major Impromptu and Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s ‘Nun komm’ der heiden Heiland’.

Brendel will remain one of the immortals.  His playing - and writing - encapsulated the great Austro-German repertoire and performance tradition.  It was his and he knew it from within.  A wonderful momento of a great occasion.