Alfred Brendel: The man who tried to seem normal

From my appreciation of the great pianist in the new issue of The Critic:

He worked so hard to appear normal. A tall man, Alfred Brendel cultivated a stoop to meet people at their level. His suits never sat easily on his frame. His tie was dark, no pattern.

His one notable accessory was a pair of black-rimmed glasses of the kind worn by Michael Caine in The Ipcress File. No comparison intended. Where Caine was slick, sexy and laconic, Brendel shambled into a room and spoke in discursive phrases.

The publisher George Weidenfeld urged him to write an autobiography. Brendel declined. “I don’t find myself interesting,” he said. That, for psychoanalysts who lived either side of his Hampstead street, made him more than just interesting. He must be in denial, they said….

Continues here.

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