Silence ought also to be the core of each concert. Remember the anagram: listen = silent.
Alfred BrendelIf I belong to a tradition it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what he should do and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed.
Alfred BrendelSilence... is the essence of the music itself, the vital ingredient that makes it possible for the music to exist at all.
Alfred BrendelIn his larger forms, Schubert is a wanderer. He likes to move at the edge of the precipice, and does so with the assurance of a sleepwalker. To wander is the Romantic condition; one yields to it enraptured, or is driven and plagued by the terror of finding no escape. More often than not, happiness is but the surface of despair.
Alfred Brendel