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Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Chamber Music

Alfred Brendel

13 - 18 May 2011
Cambridge University

World-renowned pianist Alfred Brendel was named the inaugural Humanitas Visiting Professor in Chamber Music at the University of Cambridge, from 13 to 18 May 2011. He gave a series of public lectures, which he illustrated at the piano.

Alfred Brendel was the first pianist to record Beethoven’s complete piano works. Through his efforts, Schubert’s Piano Sonatas and the Schoenberg Piano Concerto were recognised as integral to the piano repertoire. During his sixty-year career, he performed regularly at the world’s musical centres, and with  leading orchestras and conductors. His extensive discography has made him one of the most respected artists of our time. Since Alfred Brendel’s retirement from concert performances in 2008, he has continued to work around the world with young musicians and has given lectures, poetry readings and masterclasses with the Berlin Philharmonic; at London’s Wigmore Hall; in Hamburg and Paris; at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna; at the University of California (Berkeley); at Harvard University; and at the University of Zurich.

Alfred Brendel gave two public lectures at the Faculty of Music in Cambridge: the first, ‘On Character in Music’, showed that the perception of character and atmosphere in musical performances is no less important than that of form and structure. In the second lecture, ‘Light and Shade of Interpretation’, he examined performance details such as sound, notation, rhythm and character through recordings and projections. In both, he played musical examples on the piano to illustrate his ideas. The Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Chamber Music 2011 concluded with an open rehearsal and concert with the Szymanowski Quartet. In the open rehearsal Brendel and the Quartet discussed Beethoven’s Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132, which the Quartet performed in the concluding concert at West Road Concert Hall, University of Cambridge.

Alfred Brendel’s tenure as Humanitas Visiting Professor was the first in an ongoing, annual series of Humanitas Visiting Professorships in Chamber Music, held at the University of Cambridge. The Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Chamber Music 2011 has been made possible by the generous support of Mr Lawrence Saper.

To download the press release, click here

To download the flyer, click here

For more information please visit the CRASSH website