subscribeAlfred Brendel: On Character in Music, REDCAT October 28, 2010
by Nancy Cantwell
The assignment of character or poetic meaning in music of the last half of the last century has been an unfashionable practice. Perhaps practiced in secret in the hearts of all composers, but not openly discussed by many. Pure musical theories of chromatic scale, tonality and form have been the favored pursuits of “new music”, a turning away from the over laden portentous Romantic zeal that dominated the late 19th and early 20th century. But as of late there has been a distinct, albeit slow, shift back towards easy listening. The toot and bleep that has been so closely identified with composers of contemporary classical music is steadily being subverted with sound thats easier on the ears.
Programming too has begun to include performances that favor a more naturalistic response to the world. At the opening of the Green Umbrella series at Disney Hall in October the composition titled “Weather One,” by Michael Gordon was performed. Gordon spoke of being inspired by the “chaos of weather” and wanted to transcribe it musically. I find this trend for pastoral pondering an antithetic response for our deeply divergent digital age, a misplaced disconnect. But what I can understand is the need to find a meaningful context by which to reframe or bridge what has come before, to re-imagine a more complex present. One such bridge that was masterfully deliberated on at REDCAT on October 28 by the legendary pianist Alfred Brendel as part of his lecture demonstration “On Character in Music.”
The program was co-sponsored by The Brain and Creativity Institute and it’s distinguished Director, Antonio Damasio, was on hand to make the introduction. Oh to have been a fly on the wall of the pre-lecture dinner I imagined took place. Not only do these two men possess endless insight into the nature of creativity, they also possess boundless enthusiasm for their subjects. After more than 60 years on the concert tour Alfred Brendel retired in 2008, but not before he garnered a multitude of prizes, honors and awards including the Han von Bülow medal of the Berlin Philharmonic, made Honoary Knight of the British Empire in 1989, made member of the Wiener Philharmoniker in 1998, awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 2004 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2009. Now in this time of career transition Brendel has turned his indisputable authority into an integrated illustrative lecture presentation that guides his audience through the nuance of performance, interpretation and musical temperament. In his introduction, Damasio describes Brendel as synonymous with piano mastery and probing inquiry — both begin manifesting as soon as he takes the stage.
Seated on the familiar piano stool a behind a dais that faced the audience and the grand Steinway to his left Brendel launches immediately into how character infuses the sonata form. His historical command is far reaching as he paints a picture of the players who all contribute to the timeframe and philosophies that act as the cornerstones for the exploration of poetic allusion. Each piece of musical exemplification is carefully weighed for its character potency. A Schoenberg selection is used to example how the composer leaves clues for the performer as to the nature of the musics’ sensibility. These clues, through performance, are made equally transparent for the listener to reach an identical conclusion as to the character of the piece. Both the listener and performer share a consistent perspective.
The Beethoven sonatas are Brendel’s tour de force. He lives inside these compositions, thinking, feeling, breathing, bearing the weight of the composers intent. Freed from the formality of the concert platform Brendel bodily merges with the music absorbed by the psychological and emotional humors. As he is sometimes wont to throw his head back in ecstatic sing along, so Brendel reminds me of the great Glen Gould, bent over his celebrated Steinway CD 318 piano, muttering along completely assimilated by a Goldberg Variation. In examining Beethoven Brendel extracts movements that demonstrate psychological motivation through the use of prolonged tension and concentration of theme, explicates on the emotional color of anima and animus by the use of contrasting dramatic ensemble and discovers lyrical conversations that exemplify the nature of a landscape’s Arcadian temperament.
While Alfred Brendel does have the mystique of a European era past, his own predisposition is towards a modern ear. In the midst of reveling in the lyric sensitivities of Beethoven’s epoch, he adamantly declares his preference for his own far more minimalist extrapolations. Brendel asserts that musical structures and expressive atmospheres of Beethoven be sympathetic, inservice to the music at all times. And while he issues a quite contemporary warning against the tendency to “bell jar” the emotional and cautions equally the temptation to parody the poetic, we are whole heartedly encouraged to pursue all the passion that character affords us.
Please take some time to explore the Beethoven Sonata No. 30 in E, Op.109 as performed by Alfred Brendel in 1996
This is the 3rd movement, Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung.
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