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Alfred Brendel

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Austrian composer and pianist (1931–2025)

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.

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

Wikidata facts

Instance of
human
Given name
Alfred
Family name
Brendel
Gender
male
Citizenship
Czechoslovakia
Place of death
London
Occupation
writer
Languages spoken
German
Native language
German
Instrument
piano
Official website
www.alfredbrendel.com
Image
Alfredbrendel-cropped.jpg
Work location
London
Show 8 more facts
Commons category
Alfred Brendel
date of birth
1931-01-05
name in native language
Alfred Brendel
start of work period
1948-00-00
end of work period
2008-00-00
date of death
2025-06-17
Sources (8)

via Wikidata · CC0

~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.