NY Times publishes an Alfred Brendel obituary mainly about itself

… Still, his approach turned off more than a few critics — and especially those in New York, it seemed — even as they acknowledged his technical achievements. In a Times article from 1983, Mr. Holland contrasted him with the young Murray Perahia, whose apparent ease and naturalness made one feel “that there are things passing from his ear and mind to his arms and fingertips that neither he nor us really understand.”

“Mr. Brendel, on the other hand,” Mr. Holland wrote, “seems to understand everything, and that is both his fortune and his misfortune. While others seem to receive their music whole, Mr. Brendel has to reinvent his for himself — piece by piece. It is a laborious effort, and though Mr. Brendel’s playing does not always please us — it can lapse into brutality and ugly angularity — we are nevertheless drawn to it.”

In the same vein, Donal Henahan, another Times chief music critic, reviewing a segment of the Beethoven cycle earlier in 1983, called Mr. Brendel “a formidable precisionist who can play at breathtaking tempos without ever seeming to be taking a chance.” But he also found that Mr. Brendel’s playing could be “brittle” and “clinical.”

“It was as if Mr. Brendel were projecting an X-ray picture of each sonata onto a screen for our admiration,” Mr. Henahan wrote, “rather than luring us into the heart and soul of the composer.”

Mr. Brendel was treated more kindly abroad. Receiving the London Critics’ Circle Award in 2003, he gave a funny speech expressing gratitude to the reviewers in Graz, Austria, who predicted a brilliant future after his long-ago debut recital at age 17. “But,” he said, “I should also be grateful in hindsight to The New York Times, which for a number of years had put me down, for showing me that it is possible to gain a following and establish one’s reputation in spite of it.”