The festival has put out an account of the great pianist’s regular involvement, starting with his debut in … Krenek’s second piano concerto. It makes the point that Brendel was made to wait until his mid-40s for his first solo recital in the principal festival of his native country. Main events at the festival were under the thumb of local magnate, Herbert von Karajan.
For almost five decades, Alfred Brendel was deeply connected to the Salzburg Festival. Hardly another pianist left his mark on the Salzburg Festival to such an extent.
On 21 August 1960, he made his acclaimed Festival debut during a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Heinz Wallberg, performing Ernst Krenek’s Piano Concerto No. 2.
During the following years, it was the Mozart Matinees with Bernhard Paumgartner through which he conquered the hearts of Salzburg audiences.
It was not until an all-Schubert programme in 1977, however, that he performed a solo recital at the Festival. This fact was eloquently decried by Andrea Seebohm in the newspaper Kurier: “Brendel’s Schubert interpretations are doubtlessly among the greatest and most exciting of our times, which have produced such a rich trove of creative masterworks. It seems like a bad joke that this man had to wait until this past Saturday to give his first solo evening in Salzburg, while far younger and more conventional pianists had long enjoyed this opportunity.”
Alfred Brendel performed 70 times at the Salzburg Festival: 28 times as a soloist, 22 times during orchestral concerts, 8 times during Mozart Matinees and 8 times in song recitals, for example as a congenial partner to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Most recently – after taking his leave from the concert podium in 2008 – he appeared several times as a witty, humorous and erudite speaker, offering the Festival audience his “School of Listening”.
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