Alfred Brendel
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OverviewAI-generated
Alfred Brendel was an Austrian male pianist whose professional career spanned from 1948 to 2008. Born on January 5, 1931, he died on June 17, 2025. His musical output is categorized under classical and piano genres. Brendel was recognized in the American Academy Arts Sciences collection.
As an author, he produced 42 works, including *Pianists A-Z*, *Espejo cóncavo y duende negro*, *El velo del orden*, *Nach dem Schlussakkord*, and *Über Musik*. Crossref lists five of his works. He is also associated with specific quotes, such as "You need three or five hands to play Ligeti" and "The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent'."
Synthesized by Vinony from 22 facts across 8 sources: Wikidata, Last.fm, Crossref, Wikiquote, MusicBrainz, Open Library, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Works
- 42
Top works
- Pianists A-Z
- Espejo cóncavo y duende negro
- El velo del orden
- Nach dem Schlussakkord
- Über Musik
via Open Library + Wikidata
Music · MusicBrainz
- Type
- Person
- Gender
- Male
- Origin
- Austria
- Active from
- 1931-01-05
- Active to
- 2025-06-17
Discography
- Alfred Brendel Plays Beethoven1962
- Dichterliebe / 4 Heine Lieder1962
- Sonata in B Minor / Dante Sonata / Bagatelle Without Tonality / Hungarian Rhapsody No 111964
- Ungarische Rhapsodien1968
- Alfred Brendel Plays.... Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, Balakirev1972
- Diabelli Variations1972
- Klavierkonzerte KV 414 und KV 4531972
- Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 / Totentanz / Mephisto Waltz1972
- Concertos pour piano No. 20 en ré mineur, K.466 / No. 23 en la majeur, K.4881974
- Impromptus op. 142 D. 935 / Klavierstücke, D. 9461975
via MusicBrainz · CC0
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 94,515
- Total plays
- 1,567,513
Tags
Alfred Brendel (born January 5, 1931) is an Austrian pianist, born in Czechoslovakia. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest classical pianists of the second half of the 20th century. Brendel was born in Vízmberk, Czechoslovakia, now Loučná nad Desnou Czech Republic, to a non-musical family. They moved to Zagreb when Brendel was six, and later to Graz, where they lived during World War II, towards the end of which the 14 year old Brendel was sent to Yugoslavia to dig trenches. <a href="ht
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- Synthesis of graphene-based nanosheets via chemical reduction of exfoliated graphite oxide
· 2007 · cited 13,135x
- Mutation and Cancer: Statistical Study of Retinoblastoma
· 1971 · cited 5,403x
- G PROTEINS: TRANSDUCERS OF RECEPTOR-GENERATED SIGNALS
· 1987 · cited 5,000x
- Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics—2022 Update: A Report From the American Heart Association
· 2022 · cited 4,822x
- The Somatic Genomic Landscape of Glioblastoma
· 2013 · cited 4,490x
via Crossref · CC0
Quotes
- “Those who look for contradictions will be amply satisfied. The profession of a performer is full of paradoxes, and he has to learn to live with them. He has to forget himself and control himself; he has to observe the composer's wishes to the letter and create the music on the spot; he has to be part of the music market and yet retain his integrity.”
- “You need three or five hands to play Ligeti.”
- “If I belong to a tradition, it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what to do, and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed.”
- “I am accountable to the composer, but I am also there to communicate something to the listener. I am not delivering a soliloquy, but am somewhere in the middle.”
- “The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent'.”
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
Key facts
- Born
- ( 1931-01-05 ) 5 January 1931, Vizmberk , Czechoslovakia
- Died
- 17 June 2025 (2025-06-17) (aged 94), London , England
- Education
- Graz Conservatory
- Occupations
- Pianist composer writer
- Awards
- Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts Léonie Sonning Music Prize Ernst von Siemens Music Prize
- Website
- alfredbrendel .com
via Wikipedia infobox
~10 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Alfred Brendel (5 January 1931 – 17 June 2025) was a Czech-born Austrian classical pianist, poet, author, composer and lecturer, based in London. He is noted for his performances of music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, and Franz Liszt. He made three recordings of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas and was the first pianist to record Beethoven's complete works for solo piano.
Life and career
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Alfred Brendel” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.