The Hammock Papers: Brendel

Showing posts with label Brendel. Show all posts

31 March 2026

Happy Birthday, Franz Joseph Haydn

Hoppner, Franz Joseph Haydn, 1791

Young people can learn from my example that something can come from nothing. What I have become is the result of my hard efforts. I listened more than I studied, therefore little by little my knowledge and ability were developed.

Franz Joseph Haydn, born on this day in 1732

Alfred Brendel performs the Piano Sonata No. 59 in E-Flat, Hob XVI 49 ...

17 August 2025

Likely.

As soon as the cybermen

had contrived to behave like you and me

we knew

the game was up

There they sit

with faces too bland for comfort

pour their tea

look languidly into each other\'s eyes

or shake with laughter

Impeccably

yet with notable refinement

they play the piano

procreate discreetly in the attic

and shoot the birds from the roof

while we

veterans of artlessness

see no other way out

but to mutate into angels

rather more likely

turn outrageously evil

Alfred Brendel

11 August 2025

Dog-Like.

Demons

scarcely distinguishable from gods

play on the furrows of our souls

like instrumentalists

painfully but with panache

When they squeeze us

we whine

like dogs craving to get out

to bark at the dark

Dog-like

we'd love to bite them

our tormentors

only to find ourselves

biting our own tongues

Alfred Brendel

08 July 2025

Schubert, Six Moments Musicaux, D 780

Alfred Brendel ...

25 March 2025

Haydn, Piano Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI/49, L.59

Alfred Brendel performs ...

27 January 2024

Happy Birthday, Mozart

Lange, Mozart, 1782

It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born on this day in 1756

Katy Woolley, horn, Bogdan Bozovic, violin, Mark Holloway and Rosalind Ventris, violas, and James Barralet, cello, perform the Horn Quintet E flat K407 ...

29 July 2023

Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat Major, "Emperor "

Alfred Brendel performs with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic ...

Good morning!

12 June 2023

Alfred Brendel & Kit Armstrong: Set the Piano Stool on Fire

An document of the relationship between young composer and pianist Kit Armstrong and the world renowned Alfred Brendel ...

31 July 2022

Schubert, Piano Sonata in A major, D. 959

The Allegro, performed by Alfred Brendel ...

07 July 2021

Schubert, Four Impromptus, D. 935, Op. posth. 142

Alfred Brendel performs Number 1 in F minor, Number 2 in A-flat major, Number 3 in B-flat major and Number 4 in F minor ...

31 January 2021

Happy Birthday, Schubert

Abel, The Young Schubert, 1814

Alfred Brendel performs Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-flat major, D.960 ...

16 December 2020

Happy Birthday, Beethoven

Ludwig von Beethoven was born ... baptized rather, on this day in 1770.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Alfred Brendel performs Piano Concerto No. 5 E-flat major, Op. 73, "Emperor," with Kurt Masur and the NewYork Philharmonic ...

19 February 2020

Schubert, Wanderer Fantasie in C major, Op. 15 (D. 760)

Alfred Brendel performs ...

17 February 2020

Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 29 in B flat major, Op. 106, "Hammerklavier," and Bagatelles No. 2 in G minor: Allegro, and No. 3 in E flat major: Andante cantabile e grazioso

Alfred Brendel performs ...

31 January 2020

Happy Birthday, Schubert

Abel, Franz Schubert, 1814

Franz Schubert was born on this date in 1797.

The greatest misfortune of the wise man and the greatest unhappiness of the fool are based upon convention.

Franz Schubert

Alfred Brendel performs the Piano Sonata No. 22 in A major, D. 959 ...

31 December 2019

Value.

An intimate account of the relationship between young composer and pianist Kit Armstrong and the world renowned Alfred Brendel, Set the Piano Stool on Fire captures both the creative process and champions the value of teaching and collaboration and features the only filmed footage of Brendel during his farewell tour ...

12 October 2019

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

30 July 2019

Mozart, Piano Sonata No. 14 in C minor, K. 457

Alfred Brendel performs ...

11 July 2019

Hear.

“The musician wants to hear the silence,” Brendel notes:

She is there before and after the sound, tacitly breathing in the rests, at times, as in Schubert’s Sonata in B flat, the source of the beginning, elsewhere, as in Beethoven’s last three Sonatas, the designation to be reached: as the withdrawal into an inner world, the throwing off of all chains, the ultimate merging with silence.

Ever the performer, he wonders: “I hear myself. The public hears me. Do I hear the composer?”

CONNECT

Brendel's lecture, "Does Classical Music Have To Be Entirely Serious?" ...

19 June 2019

Schubert, Moments Musicaux, D. 780

Alfred Brendel performs ...

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."