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Alfred Brendel remains perhaps the preeminent thinking pianist, a loner to whom fame came through the power of imaginative integrity, an artist who has achieved -- at his best -- a profound rapport with and a unique understanding of piano literature from Bach to Schoenberg. Yet by his own account, "I did not come from a musical or intellectual family. ... I have not been a child prodigy. I do not have a photographic memory; neither do I play faster than other people. I am not a good sight-reader." Brendel's recording catalog is vast, stretching back to the dawn of the LP era. He is also a compelling writer and remained active in that capacity after retirement and into the mid-2020s.

Brendel was born to a family of Austrian background in Wiesenberg, Moravia, Czechoslovakia (in Czech, Wizemberg, and now Loučná nad Desnou in the Czech Republic) on January 5, 1931. He received piano lessons from ages six to 16 as the family moved from Zagreb to Graz, and studied composition privately while supporting himself in a variety of odd jobs. Brendel was among the first generation to learn from recordings of pianists like Alfred Cortot, Wilhelm Kempff, and Artur Schnabel, with conductors Wilhelm Furtwängler and Arturo Toscanini proving especially valuable. Master classes with Eduard Steuermann -- a pupil of Busoni and Schoenberg -- and Edwin Fischer completed his sparse musical education. A 1948 debut recital in Graz marked the beginning of his career, which was propelled by a prize at the Busoni Competition in Bolzano in 1949. His first recording, with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, appeared in 1950 or 1951 but wasn't the music for which he became better known; rather, it was Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 5 in G major, Op. 55.

Busoni's example, his mysticism and Faustian striving, fascinated the young Brendel; the latter recorded Busoni's Fantasia Contrappuntistica in the early '50s. The ensnaring and gradual liberation from Busoni's influence may be traced in the several essays Brendel wrote about him in the collection Musical Thoughts & After-Thoughts. Armed with high musical ideals, Brendel embarked upon an international recital and recording career which, in the '60s, saw his reputation grow throughout Europe and North America. He performed the entire cycle of Beethoven sonatas in London's Wigmore Hall in 1962, and recorded them for the budget Vox label, with the result that many classical listeners with more taste than money had their conceptions of repertory works deeply shaped by the pianist. In the '70s, he became an exclusive Philips artist, touring and recording a wide variety of composers including Liszt, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, Bartók, and Schoenberg, and garnering numerous awards. He remains perhaps best known, however, for his readings of the Viennese Classicists and early Romantics, from Haydn and Mozart to Schumann.

He has published books of musical criticism -- and comic poetry. In 2004, he appeared in concert with his son, cellist Adrian Brendel. Brendel announced his retirement in 2007 and undertook one last worldwide concert and recital tour, ending in Vienna in December 2008, performing, appropriately enough, Mozart's Jeunehomme Piano Concerto. Brendel remained active as a writer, and, at age 94, he contributed an essay about Busoni to a reissue of his early-'50s recordings of the Fantasia Contrappuntistica and of Liszt's Weihnachtsbaum (the latter was the world-recorded premiere of that work). No reliable count of Brendel's hundreds of recordings exists; the "complete discography" on his website is a sparse accounting of his digital releases. His recordings, even the earliest ones, remain avidly listened to, however, and his influence among thoughtful classical music listeners is perhaps unmatched. ~ Adrian Corleonis & James Manheim