Alfred Brendel Live in Salzburg offers no repertoire the pianist has not recorded before, yet the performances shouldn’t be considered redundant. For one thing, his sonority gains in ripeness, tonal allure, and dynamic variety as it congeals in a concert hall environment. That, for the most part, is the case here, although you’d never think of Brendel as a colorist per se. More than in his 1986 studio recording, Brendel’s impressively controlled fingerwork plays up the humor and harmonic surprises that season the first two movements of Haydn’s C major Sonata Hob. XVI:50. By contrast the finale is fleet but slightly emphatic and forced compared to Sviatoslav Richter’s winged suppleness in a recently unearthed 1960 Carnegie Hall recording. And as for the program’s other Haydn work, it’s a toss-up between this live F minor Variations and Brendel’s contemporaneous studio traversal: both perfectly capture the music’s taut beauty and linear give-and-take.
I can see why Brendel included his most intense and rhetorical rendition of Schubert’s A minor Sonata D. 784, but some listeners might take issue with his clangorous tone at loud moments or be distracted by the piano’s slipped tuning. This holds true for the great unfinished C major D. 840 sonata as well. As in his digital studio remake, Brendel’s tempo fluctuations in the first movement are handled with greater subtlety and expressive point than on his earlier analog counterpart, and the slow movement is more inward and sustained. Compared to Brendel’s choppy Philips studio version, this live Wagner-Liszt Liebestod positively surges with continuity, and the pianist’s imaginatively voiced polyphony evokes memories of his even more impassioned Vox recording from the 1950s. All in all, a release Brendel’s fans will want to investigate.
