Me of All People: Alfred Brendel in Conversation with Martin Meyer
Among the many enlightening and amusing things concert pianist Brendel says in this book-length interview is, "I specialize in what I am not playing." As followers of his career know, he never plays French or Russian music, adhering instead to Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt; some Schumann and Brahms; and Schonberg's concerto. In these pages, they will find out his reasons for making such choices; his evaluation of how he and pianists he admires, as well as some he doesn't, have interpreted the Middle European heart of the piano literature; his estimation of the music he plays and doesn't play; and something of his life and his chief nonmusical pursuit: his sharply intelligent, lightly absurdist humorous poetry, which can be sampled in English inOne Finger Too Many(1999). Astonishingly for so erudite a musician, he was the first in his family to pursue music at all. Equally astonishing to his detractors, who dislike his intellectuality, may be his emphatic dedication to emotional expression in piano playing. Must reading for serious music lovers.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved