Alfred Brendel - In Portrait DVD

Alfred Brendel in Portrait is a double-disc set that all admirers of this most intellectual of pianists will want to own. The first disc is a short but intense recital, consisting of Haydn's Sonata in E Flat Major, Mozart's Sonata in C minor and Schubert's G Flat Impromptu; these are thoughtful yet lyrical performances, filmed with a concentration that brings out Brendel's angst-driven magnetism. The second disc starts with a 70-minute documentary that details Brendel's upbringing and early encounters with music and his gradual metamorphosis from brilliant young virtuoso... specialising in Liszt to serious-minded interpreter of the Viennese classics: it includes a lot of expressive footage of performances of everything from the Brahms First Piano Concerto to Schubert's Winterreise with Mathias Goerne and much discussion of Brendel's extra-musical interests in poetry and painting. The disc is filled out with the pianist and Sir Simon Rattle discussing how to perform Beethoven's Second and Third Piano Concertos, and Brendel reading his own poetry in German. The multi-regional DVDs are double-sided with PAL and NSTC formats. The 16:9 anamorphic viewing ratio provides us with a hypnotically clear picture to go with extraordinarily perfect Dolby surround sound. They come with subtitles in English, French and German. --Roz Kaveney [show more]

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