Alfred Brendel: a Musical Celebration – a night to remember

Musicians are not usually first in the queue for concerts that are not their own. Nights off are precious. Another evening in a hall, someone playing a work better, worse or merely differently from how you might, could shake anyone’s equilibrium. The great pianist Alfred Brendel, who died last June at the age of 94, was a notable exception – a discerning concertgoer, especially after his retirement in 2008.

The very presence of this towering musician told us to pay attention. He particularly sought out music he was unlikely to play himself. One instance that left a strong impression on me was an epic Messiaen recital at the church of St Giles Cripplegate in the City of London, performed by the then young and unknown French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

At the end, Brendel, sitting anonymously near the back in an old mac yet unmissable, was first on his feet, his famously large hands clapping the loudest, his owlish smiles the broadest. We all followed his lead with a standing ovation. Ever dismissive of his own influence, Brendel would have hated the word “anointed”, but that was how it felt: a turning point for Aimard – and for those of us in the audience too.

Now an international star, Aimard was a central element of a bumper three-part celebration of Brendel’s life and work, held at the Barbican last Monday, with proceeds going to the Alfred Brendel Young Musicians Trust. Devised by Adrian Brendel, Alfred’s distinguished cellist son, with Thomas Hull of Maestro Arts (do agents ever get credit? Let’s give it, for once), the evening was packed with top musicians.

Alfred Brendel’s own page-turner Mike Oldham was there to do that unenviable honour for those who needed it. As many friends, colleagues and former students participated as could reasonably be crammed into one evening, and countless more were among the capacity audience. Pianists, naturally, were out in force.

So too were many leading composers. Brendel did not play works by them. His Czech-Austrian background (he was based in Hampstead, London, from 1971) helped define his preoccupations: cycles of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert were enough for a lifetime of performance. All featured in last week’s concert, together with another of his favourites, Liszt: the melancholy Elegie No 2 for cello and piano played by Adrian, which he and his father used to perform together.

Yet Brendel Sr’s curiosity, his analytical writing on music, and his own probing musicianship made him a composer’s ally. His great friend was the late Harrison Birtwistle, whom he appreciated for his originality and integrity but also, I suspect, for a completely inane sense of humour. I say that having once sat between the two of them as they engaged, with much hilarity, in an exchange of incomprehensible doggerel that allowed for no third-party participation. Let’s not forget the very young Brendel once took a tortoise on stage because he thought the idea funny.

Wit bubbled up throughout the evening, from the Dadaesque appearance of a brass band dressed as royal guardsmen in bearskin hats playing a mad march by Mauricio Kagel, to a gleeful game of swap the unintentionally recalcitrant piano stool, in which Paul Lewis, Till Fellner, Tim Horton and Aimard cheerfully engaged.

Simon Rattle, a friend and collaborator of 40 years, having fallen under Brendel’s spell as a Liverpool schoolboy, conducted a group of elite musicians in the crazed Allegro from Haydn’s Symphony No 90. This is one of the composer’s best jokes, with false endings and silences guaranteed to confuse. The ensemble, calling itself the Orchestra of the EnBrendelment, was drawn from the Nash Ensemble and various chamber groups and others. It was a veritable I-spy of outstanding players. Adrian Brendel joined the cello section, with the composer and ex-Berlin Philharmonic player Brett Dean among the violas. That’s class.

Harriet Walter read some of Brendel’s comic poems, interspersed with Aimard delighting in short works by György Kurtág. Rattle displayed his keyboard dexterity with a few lugubrious low notes on the piano, with Aimard and Fellner, in a droll work for three left hands by Kagel. Lucy Crowe (soprano) and pianist Imogen Cooper performed Mozart, as did violinist Lisa Batiashvili.

The Takács Quartet played Haydn, and were joined by Brendel Jr for the slow movement of Schubert’s Quintet in C, ineffable even without its surrounding movements. Fellner and Lewis gave us a matchless Schubert duet. András Schiff flew in specially to play Bach. The evening ended with a complete, vigorous performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 3, with Lewis as soloist. His mix of freedom, sensitivity and discipline honoured the Brendel tradition. This was a joyous tribute.

Photographs by Chris Christodoulou