Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel, legend of classical music, died on Tuesday at age 94 in London, where he had lived for many years, his spokesman told AFP.
The pianist, particularly known for his interpretations of Beethoven, “died peacefully (…) and surrounded by his relatives,” said this spokesman.
Born in 1931 in Wiesenberg, in the current Czech Republic, before his family moved to Graz in Austria, Alfred Brendel had met the deceased.
She fell on him after a concert in the early 1970s in London, a city that this quasi-autodidact made his own.
“He had come here from Vienna because he wanted to live in a great cosmopolitan city. At that time, Vienne seemed to me provincial, despite his orchestra, his opera,” he said recently in an interview with France Musique.
Retirement in 2008
Then he multiplied concerts and recordings, specializing in particular in the work of Beethoven and Schubert, but also from Mozart.
Sometimes he is accompanied on stage by his son, Adrien, cellist.
In 2004, he received the Ernst-Von-Siemens award, one of the most prestigious distinctions in the world of music.
Erudit, Alfred Brendel had also written many essays and poems.
In 2008, near a farewell concert in Musikverein, a temple of Viennese music, he had retired and still lived in the British capital, in the Hampstead district. However, he continued giving lectures and master classes.
The Royal Philarmonic Society praised a “music giant to the touch of great tenderness” in X.
“A deeply cultivated man”
“It was a model of civilization, a deeply cultivated man, passionate about music, who shared this love without making commitments, or artistic or personally. We will miss a lot,” British cellist Steven Isseris reacted on X.
Alfred Brendel had four children and four grandchildren
Source: BFM TV
