"In a series of dialogues with Martin Meyer, Brendel speaks about his life, the development of his career, his music-making, his travels, his poems and essays; about his childhood in Zagreb, adolescence in Graz, and experiences as a young man in Vienna ("I was in Vienna, but I was never a 'genuine' Viennese"); about literature, painting, architecture, and kitsch.".
In these dialogues, Alfred Brendel speaks about his life, the development of his career, his music-making, his travels, his poems and essays; about his childhood in Zagreb, adolescence in Graz, and experiences as a young man in Vienna.
Presents the author's definitive collection of his award-winning writings on music. This work combines revised versions of his two classic books, "Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts" and "Music Sounded Out", and also includes a number of important essays. It is suitable for serious piano players and listeners alike.
Alfred Brendel - internationally famous as the supreme interpreter of the piano music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt - is also a poet. Between concert engagements and recording sessions, he has found the time to write this collection of sardonic, wise, funny, and beautifully turned verses. Penetrating light is thrown on those parts of the author's endlessly subtle mind and sensibility which his devoted audiences can barely have guessed existed. The supernumerary finger of the book's title, the appearance of Brahms's smelly ghost, the war between the bearded and the beardless, the camel's loss of his humps, the appropriateness of laughter, the eventual appearance of Godot and the usefulness of identical twins are among the important subjects he tackles. With the help of Richard Stokes, Alfred Brendel has produced English versions of his original texts which go out to meet the reader with refreshing directness and wit.
The title of this collection of essays refers to a tailor's mannequin that Alfred Brendel spotted in a shop window in Arezzo, a small Tuscan town. And so, in his delightful new collection, great masters of nonsense meet great masters of music.
'This book distils what, at my advanced age, I feel able to say about music, musicians, and matters of my pianistic profession.' Ever since Alfred Brendel bid farewell to the concert stage after six decades of performing, he has been passing on his insight and experience in the form of lectures, readings and master-classes.
A unique insight into the exceptional mind of one of the outstanding musicians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Alfred Brendel versteht sich außer am Klavier auch sprachlich glänzend auszudrücken. In diesem Buch gibt der Musiker kritische Einblicke in die musikalische Praxis – insbesondere zu Beethovens und Schuberts Streichquartetten – und einen erhellenden Rückblick auf seine Plattenaufnahmen. Und der Leser Brendel interessiert sich für die Literaten des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts. Lebhafte Beobachtungen eines großen Pianisten zu Musik, Literatur und Film – ergänzt um Gedanken des großen Dichters Jean Paul.
Essays und Vorträge nebst Gesprächen mit Snow, Terry ; Wolff, Konrad Sonderausgabe. Zahlr. Notenbeisp. 277 S.
Gedichte
Der Pianist als Dichter: Mit seinen komischen und grotesken Versen baut Alfred Brendel eine luftige Brücke zwischen Sinn und Unsinn. So wird bei ihm Beethoven (der, was auch ziemlich unbekannt ist, ein Neger war) als Mörder von Mozart entlarvt oder die bewegende Frage erörtert, was geschah, als Brahms sich in den Finger geschnitten hatte. In Brendels Gedichten - von denen sämtliche in diesem Band versammelt sind - kommt alles und jeder zur Sprache, sogar ein Speckschwein, das am Telefon grunzend seine Lebensgeschichte erzählt.
