'Conversations' Event Unveils Playful Side of Music Legend

Alfred Brendel reads his poem with a nonchalant, playful solemnity. It’s a whimsical, unobtrusive parody of a public service announcement, describing with the utmost sincerity how pianos should be “smoked” in chimneys rather than “cooked.” His audience roars with laughter.

Alfred Brendel is not a comedian, nor is he solely a poet. As those well-versed in classical music would attest, he’s best known as one of the world’s most accomplished and knowledgeable classical pianists.

But when Brendel appeared October 13 as part of the Conversations with Kirkland series and the Office for the Arts’ Learning from Performers program, two sides of him were present: the prolific, perceptive musician and the charming, creative man.

“He is such a titan of the music world. His performing and his knowledge of repertory is just incredible,” says Thomas S. Lee, the Learning from Performers program manager. “But I was also really struck by the other side of him, the more playful side.”

In the middle of the conversation, music professor Anne C. Shreffler, who moderated the event, played Brendel’s recording of Variation 20 from Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations.” This piece, she said, had earned a particular nickname from German conductor Hans von Bülow—“the Oracle.”

As a musician, Brendel is himself somewhat of an oracle. As he discussed during the event, he is part of a school of performers who focus not on reinventing or embellishing the pieces they play, but on trying to understand and channel the feelings the composer meant to convey. “The main style is that you respect what the composer wrote down, respect that he took the time to write down all those markings,” Brendel said during the conversation.

Brendel and Shreffler discussed particularly the great European composers (whose pieces comprise much of Brendel’s famed repertoire) and the influences behind their style and works, topics ranging from the unique sensibilities of Chopin as a composer for the piano rather than for the ensemble, the inspiration from other genres in the works of Bach and Haydn, and the unexpected humor behind Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations.”

“[Brendel’s] reading of the score is very, very precise. He’ll say, ‘this is a Beethoven kind of pianissimo,’ or ,‘This is a Schubert kind of pianissimo,’ and I think that is unusual. He has studied the complete works of these composers, so he knows that when [Beethoven] writes pianissimo he means a certain thing,” Shreffler says. “He’s not saying ‘I can read the composer’s mind,’ but he’s coming at it by studying and becoming familiar with the score and taking every notation seriously.”

Interspersed throughout the discussion were recordings by Brendel, such as several of the “Diabelli Variations” and a Schubert minuet, and the discussion concluded with a question-and-answer session.

When asked for advice, Brendel returned to the importance of understanding the composer’s intentions. “The most important advice I have to give is: study composition. Try to compose. It can help to see what it means to write these things down,” Brendel said. “When I studied composition, I was always interested in how one [composes], how the mind of the composer works and, more importantly, how the mind of this particular composer works.”

But Brendel is not all notation and interpretation. He also exhibited a more playful attitude, encouraging the audience not to always take art so seriously. In the discussion, he commented on the humor that can be found in musical interplay, but he was also prompted to read some of his own bizarrely funny, Dada-esque poetry.

“I was very glad that Anne Shreffler asked him to read, because I think that’s a side of Brendel that people don’t really see much of. I think seeing that side of him was interesting and eye-opening,” Lee says.

Those attending the conversation say they appreciated the small-scale setting of the event and the human connection to the artist it offered.

“It allowed him as well as the audience to really open up. When you’re a performer and you’re on a stage, you can’t pull out someone’s personality. Even if you’re in a lecture hall and you’re listening to someone discuss whatever it is, they don’t have that relaxed way of presenting material,” Danielle G. Rabinowitz ’14 says.

The day after the Conversations with Kirkland event, Brendel gave the Louis C. Elson lecture entitled, “Musical Character in Beethoven’s Sonatas,” in Paine Hall. Interspersing commentary with performance, he presented how each sonata was carefully structured to reflect its inspiration, which could be anything from a galloping horse to a divine messenger.

“To have the experience of an extraordinary intellectual point of view in lecture, which is underpinned by a series of sound worlds of that kind, is not something that anybody who attended that lecture can hope to experience often,” music professor Robert D. Levin ’68 says. “The apollonian view that Maestro Brendel has represented for his entire performance lifespan is the stance of truly lasting values that, to my mind, present the absolute ideal approach to artistry.”