Music Sounded Out: Essays, Lectures, Interviews, Afterthoughts

by Alfred Brendel

A scholar and lover of literature as well as world-class pianist, Brendel offers in these essays a rare glimpse into the mind of an exceptional performer, wrestling with the duties and pleasures that come with making music.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

258 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Alfred Brendel was a Czech-born Austrian classical pianist, poet, author, composer, and lecturer 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.

Reviews

[Len · Rating 4 out of 5]

As one would expect from a master musician this is a series of masterful essays on aspects of the musical repertoire of a virtuoso concert pianist. As some of them are derived from academic lectures and articles in specialised music magazines and journals they often assume a level of musical knowledge which can be off-putting and a little daunting.

There are essays on playing Mozart, Beethoven's Diabelli Variations and piano concertos, Schubert's sonatas, Schumann's Kinderszenen, Liszt's Années de pelerinage and B minor sonata, Busoni's Doktor Faust, Bach's keyboard music, and on Wilhelm Furtwängler and Artur Schnabel's interpretations of music. Each is a considered and detailed expression of Alfred Brendel's unsurpassed knowledge and downright love of the music he plays and how it should be played. His passion for his work and respect for its creators speaks through in every sentence.

[Derk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book largely consists of profound personal analyses of piano music, particularly by Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. Brendel, himself one of the great interpreters of this repertoire, provides insightful descriptions of several important works.

A significant portion of the book is dedicated to Schubert’s last three sonatas. The tables with related themes offer a lot of insight, and the personal descriptions of the character of these pieces are very well done. If you play any of these pieces yourself, you absolutely must read this. (Charles Rosen’s Sonata Forms also contains beautiful analyses that shed a completely different light on these sonatas.)