Me of All People - Alfred Brendel in Conversation with Martin Meyer PDF
Preview Me of All People - Alfred Brendel in Conversation with Martin Meyer
Me of People Ail Alfred Brendel in Conversation with Martin Mever Translated bv I lion • d,ha dI ing 41 hi"sh ncro m1 has ME OF ALL PEOPLE ALFRED BRENDEL in conversation with MARTIN MEYER translated byRichard Stokes CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA, NEW YORK FirstpublishedinGermaninzooi byCarlHanserVerlag ©CarlHanserVerlagMunichWien,2001 FirstpublishedinloozbyCornellUniversityPress Translationcopyright©RichardStokes,2002 Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsinareview,thisbook,orparts,thereof, mustnotbereproducedinanyformwithoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublisher. ForinformationaddressCornellUniversityPress,SageHouse,512EastStateStreet, Ithaca,NewYork14850 ISBN0-8014-4099-8 Librarians:LibraryofCongressCataloging-in- PublicationDataareavailable Contents I Life page I II AboutMusic page 77 III On Performance page 175 IV OnWriting page 223 V Epilogue page 247 Afterword page 261 Index page 265 I Life Intellectually, butalsogeographically, youarea CentralEuropean. To whatextentcan thesame besaidofyourancestorsf I'mnotfondofbeingcategorized. Ihave Germanaswell asAustrian forebears, and a grandmother called Aloisia Guerra who came from NorthernItaly; butthere's also Slavonic blood ifyougo bythename ofmy maternal grandfather, Wieltschnig, although the spelling was thoroughly Germanized. You could say that I'm an Austrian mix after all. Isn'tBrendela CentralEuropean namef It'sprobablymostwidespreadinNorthGermany. Hereisa storythat proves it. I was getting dressed in my hotel room before a concert in Hamburg when the telephone rang. 'Uncle Alfred, it's Egon.' 'I was- n't aware I had a nephew called Egon.' 'You've got a concert this evening, haven't you?' 'Yes, I'm just putting on my tails.' 'Is Aunt Jennythere?' 'Thereisn'tanAuntJenny.Whodoyoumean?' 'I'vegot anuncle in BadKissingenwho'scalledAlfred Brendel, a pianoplayer likeyou.'Then, when Iwentdownstairs into the hotel lobby, I found myconcertagentwaitingformewith his mother-in-law, nee Brendel. We droveto theconcert hall where Iwas addressed on the steps out- sidetheartists'roombyamiddle-agedmanwhoinformedmethathis name was Alfred Brendel. 'Aha,' I said, 'the gentleman from Bad Kissingen.' 'Not atall,' he replied, 'I live in Hamburg.' All thatwith- inhalfan hour. Doesitoften happen thatyouareapproachedbyotherBrendelsf LIFE In my dining room in London hang two family portraits. One depicts six brotliersandsisters from Leipzigwho are notrelated tome. Itwas painted during the Schumann era, around 1840. On the left sits the youngestoftheseBrendels, playingthepiano. Hisnameseems to have been Albert Brendel, like my father's, and he apparently loved playing Beethoven. The picture was bequeathed to me by an elderly Brendel lady who was aware that there was no proofwe were related. I have adopted this family. In my own there are neither musicians nor artists norintellectuals, so this AlbertBrendel is my honorary musical ances- tor.TheothergroupportraitshowsaWheelofHell-amanneristpic- ture with traces ofHieronymus Bosch - on which humans are being tortured by devils. I bought it at auction in Vienna, where it scared everyone. It was only several years later that a historian explained to me thatthe name Brendel derived from Brandli or Brendly, depending whether it was written in the Swiss or English way. It was one ofthe names forthe devil inthe MiddleAgesand inthewitchcraft literature ofthe sixteenth century. Suddenly my family was becoming interest- ing. I am, nevertheless, no devil-worshipper. And I do not, like Stravinsky, believe 'in the person ofGod and the person ofthe devil', as I once heard him declare on the radio! But there are in my studio, quite bychance, an alpine maskwithgenuine horns, and a hugemen- acingancestral figure from New Guinea. Theyhelp me to stayincon- tact with reality while I practise. As it happens, a volume of my German poems iscalled Little Devils. I'm interested in how your childhooddeveloped in such a multiracial state. Whatwereyourfirstmemories? One ofmyveryfirstwas aural; indeed, quite a fewofmyearly recol- lectionsareconnectedwiththeear. Irememberawalk inWiesenberg, mybirthplace,andadogbyafenceterrifyingmewithitsbarking. My first trauma. Then there was an elderly nanny, called 'Milli-Tant', whousedtosingme folksongs, all ofwhichIcouldsoonsingmyself. From Wiesenberg we moved to Yugoslavia, to the Dalmatian island of Krk, where my parents spent two years trying to run a hotel in Omisalj. When was thatf LIFE Age three and four. I remember a record player which I sometimes operated for the hotel guests. I was allowed to wind it up and place recordsonit.Thatwasmyfirstacquaintancewithelevatedmusic.Jan Kiepura andJosef Schmidt sang things like 'Ob blond ob braun, ich HebealleFraun' and 'Wenn du untreu bisf. I stood nextto the record player, sangalongandthought: Ican dothattoo. Then I remember going for a walk on the beach with my young nannyBertawhentwohotelguestsapproachedus. Oneofthempoint- edatmeandsaidtohiscompanion: 'Isthata boyoragirl?'Theother man said: 'A boy of course, you can tell by his energetic features!' When bothofthemhadpassed by, Isaid: 'Berta,thatmansaidyou're a silly cow!' [An untranslatable pun: 'Energische Ziige' - 'ndrrische Ziege\] It was Berta herself who reminded me of the story twenty years later. You wereaprotectedonly child. Wereyou inany wayawareofthisf My parents certainly protected me, perhaps too much. What I owe them istheir reliability, punctuality, love oforderand, definitely, their parental love. Theygave me warmth and security. Yet I became what myparentswerenot. EverythingthatIfoundespeciallyinterestinghad to beexploredandevaluatedonmyown. Andthishabithasremained with me. There was also hardly any musical stimulation, although I remember my mother, when I was very young, singing ''Ich reiss mir eine Wimper aus und stech Dich damit tof ['I'll pull out an eyelash and stab you to death with it'] - a wonderful Berlin cabaret hit a la Dada. 'Silly, isn'tit?' she invariably said afterwards. When we moved to Zagreb and I reached school age, I owned my own record player, a small, yellow machine with a horn. I remember the song: 'Was macht der Mayeram Himalaya? Rauf, ja das kunnf er, aber wie kommt er wiederrunterfDermachtein'Rutsch undistfutsch." ['WhatisMyers doing in the Himalayas? He got up all right, but howwill he everget down? He slips and snuffs it.'] These were early contributions to a world view, fragments of an absurd world that stayed in the back of myhead. AttheageofsixIwasgivenpianolessonswhichformyparentswas the height ofgood form. I remember my teacher, Sofie Dezelic, who during my first lesson explained note values to me in the most poetic LIFE way by plucking a sprig ofblossom. When I was seven I composed a waltzthatwentsomethingliketheRadetzkyMarch,exceptthatitwas in three-four time. We were living in a Zagreb house which looked onto the market place, and through a window I would sometimes see on the opposite side the heads of little girls bobbing up and down. It was a ballet school; and a girl called Daria Gasteiger visited us once with her mother, put on her ballet shoes and improvised a dance on points to my Radetzky waltz. A big moment. Didyoufeelasense ofachievement? It was an experience that I would not put into the absurd category. Thisgirl belonged to a children's ballet school, a group thattook part in the performances of the 'Djecje Carstvo', a fairly prestigious chil- dren'sorganizationthatonceayearputonshowsintheZagrebopera house. In one ofthese I hadthe honourofplayinga leadingpart, that ofa general with a fez and sabre. It was my first time on stage, and I had to sing two old Austrian couplets. I remember that one ofthem was called 'Das WassergigerP, and that 'Am Wasser, am Wasser bin i z'Haus' rhymed with 'Jedes Dampfschiffweichtmiraus\ Butthe text Ihadtosingwas inCroatianwhichIdidnotyetunderstand. Another time I had to sing on the radio - a most embarrassing experience: I began the songfartoo high and fluffedthetop note. Was musicalreadyan essentialpartofyourlife? Not really, since there was no awareness at home that music was something important. Both my parents had in a modest way enjoyed piano lessons as children, and played four hands perhaps once a month-pieces like the overture to Louis Herold's Zampa. I still have avividmemory-visualratherthanaural-oftheseperformances.My father tried to play in a carefree, bravura way, raising his hands in jerky movements, and twitching with the corner ofhis mouth almost up to his eye. My mother was quite the opposite. She would sit very tensely at the piano with an anxious expression and stab at the notes likea woodpecker. Anyway,thiswaswhen Istarted mypianolessons. Whenwe moved to Grazand I had to leavemyfirstteacherIwastold thatI was too tense and should tryto loosen up.
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