Brendel & son play Beethoven

[Peter]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/featu...230131,00.html

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'Man know thyself'

[Chris]

That's a nice story, them playing together like that. He is one of my favorite pianists, and I will have to check these recordings out when they are available.

[Beyond Within]

My own upbringing was also unorthodox. I really had no teacher after my 16th year. I do not believe in technical recipes that one applies to things - recipes of declamation or articulation, of which there might be five to eight, and which you apply to anything. Each piece is different and tells you basically how to approach it, even in instrumental terms." Adrian agrees: "If you've grown up in a technical school or had a teacher who keeps you away from the great masterpieces until you've really found out how to play everything, you'll have trouble putting the technique to its proper use. There are cellists who do teach like that. I've seen it a lot in America. Brilliant cellists who play very, very well, but who have one method of playing everything. I just come from another background."

Awesome. I completely agree.

[Amalie]

Thankyou for the link Peter,
I think for all Beethoven lovers, Brendel is the favourite.
Personally I could talk for a long time about the beauties of his playing, the way it is so wonderfully structured and its whole grammar and architecture is just fantastic. There is just something extraordinary about the pressure Brendel puts on the keys which is impossible for me to describe.
I was reading an interview with him and he said that when he rehearses he puts small bandages on the tips of his fingers so that he can feel the keys better when he comes to play. Just to show that his is mortal however, I did hear him play Beethoven's Choral Fantasy and it was a decidedly so so performance. He does perhaps at times lack a little bit of fire in his playing.
That said, Brendel's playing of Beethoven's piano concertos with the Chicago Symphony are out of this world. For me anyway.
I am booked up to see the great man play himself in Sept. though he would hate that description as he is so charmingly modest.
Looks like the Barbican is a must!




[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited 06-04-2004).]

[Chris]

Brendel also looks shockingly similar to a physics professor I once had. Every time I see a picture of him, it brings me back to that class. Yikes.

[urtextmeister]

One point that I found interesting:

That Beethoven created a style for writing for these two instruments. Playing these sonatas, I noticed how clever Beethoven was to generally keep the piano away from where the cello was in terms of range. This often meant the pianist was playing quite low and quite high with nothing in the middle.

I have noticed later composers followed suit especially Brahms. Were there other composers who wrote for this combination of instruments before Beethoven and dealt with the logistics of showing off both instruments simultaneously?
Boccherini wrote for cello and piano, but possibly because his piano parts were less independent, he saw no need to develop a new style of writing for this combination.