Alfred Brendel Lectures
Director: Mark Kidel
Distributor: C Major Entertainment
Length: 3 x 80 min.
16:9 shot in 1080i HD | stereo & 5.1 surround sound
© 2009, Principal photography services for Unitel / Classica in coproduction with Salzburger Festspiele
Pi­an­ist Al­fred Brendel gave his fi­nal pub­lic per­form­ance in Decem­ber 2008, to a 20-minute stand­ing ova­tion in the Mu­sik­ver­ein in Vi­enna. He'd been play­ing pro­fes­sion­ally for about 60 years. For the Salzburg Fest­iv­al he has chosen to ap­pear ex­cep­tion­ally on stage again and to give three lec­tures with­in the „School of Listen­ing Series“ 2010.
1. Does all Clas­sic­al Mu­sic have to be En­tirely Ser­i­ous?
Can ab­so­lute mu­sic, without the as­sist­ance of words, move­ment, ort he stage be funny?

2. On Char­ac­ter in Mu­sic
The lec­ture sets out to show that in mu­sic­al per­form­ances the per­cep­tion of char­ac­ter and at­mo­sphere is no less im­port­ant than that of form and struc­ture.

3. Light and Shade of In­ter­pret­a­tion
In this lec­ture Brendel speaks about per­for- mance in gen­er­al and then ex­am­ines vari­ous as­pects in de­tail.
Mr. Brendel plays a num­ber of mu­sic­al ex­amples dur­ing the lec­ture. Al­fred Brendel’s place among the greatest mu­si­cians of the 20th and 21st cen­tur­ies is as­sured. Renowned for his mas­terly in­ter­pret­a­tions of the works of Haydn, Moz­art, Beeth­oven, Schubert, Brahms, and Liszt, he is one of the in­dis­put­able au­thor­it­ies in mu­sic­al life.