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Funny, I've been a bit obsessed with Alfred Brendel's recordings of the Schubert impromptus recently (especially No. 2). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yaUxi

Funny, I've been a bit obsessed with Alfred Brendel's recordings of the Schubert impromptus recently (especially No. 2). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yaUxihBZXs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yaUxihBZXs He's an exceptional world class pianist and I have to imagine that the ideas in his book come from a place of deep experience. I only mention this because the LRB critic is pretty savage toward Brendel in the review and one might walk away from the review only thinking that Glenn Gould is some sort of water walker and Brendel is a joke, which is completely unwarranted.

beefman 6y ago
I grew up on Brendel's recordings of Beethoven's piano sonatas. I still love his sincere way of playing them, that doesn't try to turn them into show-off pieces. I prefer Brendel's Beethoven to Gould's most of the time. But the limitations of Brendel's techinque are sometimes detectable in his playing. From a technical standpoint Gould is on another planet from Brendel, and I don't think Brendel himself would disagree with this. On top of his unique approach to everything he played, Gould was one of the most technically adept pianists of all time, in league with Marc-Andre Hamelin, Yuja Wang, and only a few others.
- daviddaviddavid 6y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly about Gould's technique (at least in his early years) but whether one appreciates the music he makes will always involve other non-purely-technical criteria. For example, I'd almost always rather listen to Murray Perahia's Goldberg Variations than Gould's. I just love Perahia's sense of musicality and the warmth of it all. Gould's younger Goldbergs are insanely virtuosic/quicksilver but I find myself almost getting beat over the head by it all. In either event, my point about Brendel was more just that he's worth checking out in his own right and not just some dude who wrote a possibly crappy book. And I still love his Schubert Impromptus even if his technique looks lame to more discerning eyes!

beefman 6y ago

I grew up on Brendel's recordings of Beethoven's piano sonatas. I still love his sincere way of playing them, that doesn't try to turn them into show-off pieces. I prefer Brendel's Beethoven to Gould's most of the time. But the limitations of Brendel's techinque are sometimes detectable in his playing. From a technical standpoint Gould is on another planet from Brendel, and I don't think Brendel himself would disagree with this. On top of his unique approach to everything he played, Gould was one of the most technically adept pianists of all time, in league with Marc-Andre Hamelin, Yuja Wang, and only a few others.

daviddaviddavid 6y ago
I agree wholeheartedly about Gould's technique (at least in his early years) but whether one appreciates the music he makes will always involve other non-purely-technical criteria. For example, I'd almost always rather listen to Murray Perahia's Goldberg Variations than Gould's. I just love Perahia's sense of musicality and the warmth of it all. Gould's younger Goldbergs are insanely virtuosic/quicksilver but I find myself almost getting beat over the head by it all. In either event, my point about Brendel was more just that he's worth checking out in his own right and not just some dude who wrote a possibly crappy book. And I still love his Schubert Impromptus even if his technique looks lame to more discerning eyes!