Alfred Brendel: Live in Vienna - Decca: 4833288 - CD or download | Presto Classical

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This [the Brahms] is playing of tremendous incisiveness, highly energetic in both physical and intellectual terms. Brendel traces a powerful thread of development and logic through the set’s... — BBC Music Magazine, July 2018, More…

Release Date: 9th Mar 2018
Catalogue No: 4833288
Label: Decca
Length: 58 minutes

Presto Recording of the Week

16th March 2018
Gramophone Magazine

June 2018

Re-issue/Archive of the Month
Presto Recordings of the Year

Finalist 2018

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Contents

Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54

31:16

$3.30

$4.20

Alfred Brendel (piano)
Wiener Philharmoniker
Sir Simon Rattle
Recorded: 2001-03-11
Recording Venue: Musikverein, Großer Saal, Vienna

1. Allegro affettuoso

15:15

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2. Intermezzo (Andantino grazioso)

4:37

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3. Allegro vivace

11:24

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Brahms: Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24

27:44

$29.70

$37.80

Alfred Brendel (piano)
Recorded: 1979-06-04
Recording Venue: Konzerthaus Wien

Aria

0:53

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Variation I

0:56

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Variation II

0:43

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Variation III

0:42

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Variation IV

0:53

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Variation V

1:19

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Variation VI

0:57

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Variation VII

0:35

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Variation VIII

0:38

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Variation IX

1:00

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Variation X

0:35

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Variation XI

0:53

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Variation XII

1:06

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Variation XIII

1:31

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Variation XIV

0:37

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Variation XV

0:45

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Variation XVI

0:35

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Variation XVII

0:36

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Variation XVIII

1:10

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Variation XIX

0:54

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Variation XX

1:18

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Variation XXI

0:40

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Variation XXII

1:06

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Variation XXIII

0:34

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Variation XXIV

0:35

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Variation XXV

0:40

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Fuga

5:33

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$1.40

About
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Further Reading

Recording of the Week, Alfred Brendel performs music by Schumann and Brahms

16th March 2018

Live recordings by Alfred Brendel of Schumann's Piano Concerto and Brahms's Handel Variations have been made available on disc for the first time.

Live recordings from Austrian Radio broadcasts (ORF) released for the very first time by one of the greatest musicians of all time.

The Schumann Piano Concerto requires virtually everything a pianist should have to offer: poetry, virtuosity, poised restraint – Brendel passes the test on all accounts with his passionate, insightful and refreshing interpretation.

On this Schumann Piano Concerto performance, taken from Brendel’s 70th Birthday residency in 2001, with the inestimable partners in Sir Simon Rattle and the Wiener Philharmoniker, Alfred Brendel writes that “listening to this live recording I felt that, for once, I heard what I wanted to hear”.

Brahms “Handel” Variations are what many consider to be the most imposing piece of its kind composed in the four decades that separate it from Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations.

A work with a wealth of different characters, colour and masterful disposition. The Fugue in particular is something to marvel at with its contrapuntal and pianistic power. Even Wagner had to concede that the result was impressive, “One sees what can still be done with the old forms when someone comes along who knows how to handle them”.

Brendel has never recorded the Brahms “Handel” Variations in the studio which makes this his first commercially available recording of the work

Reviews

July 2018

This [the Brahms] is playing of tremendous incisiveness, highly energetic in both physical and intellectual terms. Brendel traces a powerful thread of development and logic through the set’s successive variations; voicing is superb and there’s a splendid variety of touch and texture, while the whole interpretation is shot through with the adrenaline of live performance.

June 2018

So do we need another account of the Schumann from Brendel? Yes, when it’s this fine...Rattle and Brendel mould a reading that ebbs and flows with complete naturalness...Brendel may have been playfully dismissive of [the Brahms] but there’s no sense of halfheartedness about this performance...This is without question an essential addition to the Brendel discography.

16th March 2018

Brendel seems happy to allow the orchestra to come through where appropriate, and this meant that I could hear every quiet string entry perfectly. That's not to say that he is ever underpowered, however: the first-movement cadenza is impressively robust…[In the Brahms] it's a joy to listen to the range of colours and variations of tone that Brendel produces.

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