In addition to his activities in the concert hall and recording studio, Alfred Brendel weds his love of music with an interest in literature through musical essays which often appear in his concert programmes, recording liner notes, and lectures. To date, two volumes of his collected writings, Musical Thoughts & Afterthoughts and Music Sounded Out, have been published. True to the original spirit of Montaigne's Essays -- from the French, essayer, or "to try" -- Brendel regards his literary efforts in much the same light as his musical journeys: as "work-in-progress", constantly evolving and renewing themselves. Brendel himself writes in the original Preface to Musical Thoughts & Afterthoughts:

Those who look for contradictions will be amply satisfied. The profession of a performer is full of paradoxes, and he has to learn to live with them. He has to forget himself and control himself; he has to observe the composer's wishes to the letter and create the music on the spot; he has to be part of the music market and yet retain his integrity. ...None of my writings presumes to be the last word on anything.

Of necessity the seven selections featured in these pages are only brief glimpses into the sustained inquiry and argument carried out by Brendel in his writing. It is hoped that the small disservice of portioning his thoughtful constructions into little "Web-bytes" -- in a manner admittedly too much like newspaper headlines and television soundbites -- will serve to spur the curious to read and delve further.

Both volumes of his essays are published in the US by The Noonday Press and are available in paperback editions. For reference the full contents of both books are given below (though only the present essays will be featured in these webpages as a sample).

• BEETHOVEN
• Notes on a Complete Recording of Beethoven's Piano Works
• Werktreue -- An Afterthought
• Form and Psychology in Beethoven's Piano Sonatas
• SCHUBERT
• Schubert's Piano Sonatas
• LISZT
• Liszt Misunderstood
• Liszt and the Piano Circus -- An Afterthought
• Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies
• Liszt's Piano Playing
• Turning the Piano into an Orchestra (Liszt's Transcriptions and Paraphrases)
• Fidelity to Liszt's Letter?
• BUSONI
• A Peculiar Serenity
• Arlecchino and Doktor Faust
• Afterthoughts on Busoni
• EDWIN FISCHER
• Remembering My Teacher
• Afterthoughts on Edwin Fischer
• COPING WITH PIANOS
• TALKING TO BRENDEL (by Jeremy Siepmann)
• APPENDIX
• The Process of Foreshortening in the First Movement of Beethoven's Sonata Op. 2, No. 1

• A Mozart Player Gives Himself Advice
• Must Classical Music be Entirely Serious?
• The Sublime in Reverse
• Beethoven's Diabelli Variations
• The Text and its Guardians
• Notes on Beethoven's Piano Concertos
• Beethoven's New Style
• Schubert's Last Sonatas
• Testing the Grown-Up Player: Schumann's 'Kinderszenen'
• The Noble Liszt
• Liszt's 'Années de pèlerinage' I and II
• Liszt's B minor Sonata
• Liszt's Bitterness of Heart
• Busoni's 'Doktor Faust'
• Furtwängler
• A Case for Live Recordings
• On Recitals and Programmes
• Two Interviews
• Bach and the Piano (with Terry Snow)
• On Schnabel and Interpretation (with Konrad Wolff)