On the day he would have been 95, the musical world gathered at The Barbican to pay tribute last night to Alfred Brendel, one of the truly great pianists of our time. Given the respect in which he was held over a career lasting more than half a century, it was perhaps not so difficult to persuade several dozen top-calibre musicians to give their services in aid of the Alfred Brendel Young Musicians Trust, which supports aspiring pianists.
In addition to the dozen or so soloists, a quaintly titled Orchestra of EnBrendelment, featuring exceptional talents including several soloists in their own right, was mustered under the direction of the ever-inspirational Simon Rattle.
The tripartite programme, a mixture of the sublime and the quirky, would doubtless have delighted Brendel, known for his idiosyncratic sense of humour, in every way except for its Classic FM tendency to favour single movements over whole works, thus depriving us of context and continuity. Brendel himself, a purveyor of acerbic verse, would have written a poem about it.
On the plus side, it did allow us to hear the likes of Lisa Batiashvili in the Andante of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No, 4, Lucy Crowe in the same composer’s concert aria Ch’io mi scordi di te? with Imogen Cooper at the keyboard, and the Takács Quartet in a Haydn movement and the Adagio of Schubert’s C major String Quintet, with Brendel’s son Adrian as the second cello. The latter also gave a soul-searching rendering, with Tim Horton, of Liszt’s introspective, little-known Elegie No. 2 for cello and piano. All were performances of the highest quality, as was that of Till Fellner and Paul Lewis in a Schubert piano duet.
András Schiff, who likes to surprise audiences with his programmes these days, began with an unadvertised piece (the Aria of Bach’s Goldberg Variations) before delivering a typically immaculate Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother by the same composer.
Part 3 of the concert did offer something else Brendel would surely have relished: a sequence of piano miniatures, mostly by György Kurtág, played with whimsical humour by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, interwoven among a selection of his own Dadaist-flavoured verse, read stylishly by Harriet Walter. The sequence was topped and tailed by a pair of Mauricio Kagel’s absurdist but subversive Fall Short of Victory marches played by a group of Royal College of Music students kitted out in guards uniforms complete with busbies.
No less quirky was Kagel’s Hippocrates’ Oath for three left hands at one piano, the appendages in question supplied by Rattle, Horton and Aimard, though the latter was actually required to tap the side of the instrument for most of the piece – not the most obvious use of his talents.
And thankfully a complete work to end: Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto in C minor, played exquisitely by Lewis with Rattle once again conjuring magic from his elite squad.
Over it all hovered the spirit of Brendel, one felt, smiling benevolently, if wryly, at the fuss made on his behalf.
