Alfred Brendel

This gargantuan 35-disc set of Alfred Brendel's complete Vox, Turnabout, and Vanguard recordings released in late 2008, concurrent with his retirement from concert life, will be mandatory listening for anyone who reveres the Austrian virtuoso. When these recordings were made between 1955 and 1975, Brendel was at the start of his international career, and his performances here have a fire, energy, and a drama that his later recordings sometimes lack. Brendel devotees, however, may also find his performances lack the intellectual rigor of his middle period recordings and the poetic depths of his later recordings. Compare his demonic account of Mozart's Twentieth Concerto here, for instance, with his more elegant later account. The difference is clear.

This first of the two sets contains four indisputable masterpieces. In the stormy D minor Concerto K. 466, Brendel springs a mild surprise by playing his own cadenzas rather than Beethoven's, the ones most often used. I must confess to preferring Beethoven's unstylish but dramatic and imaginative cadenza to the first movement, but otherwise the performance is beyond reproach. Brendel adds some discreet and entirely appropriate ornamentation to the many repetitions of the second movement's main theme. The Olympian C major K. 467, with its incomparably beautiful slow movement, also receives some much-needed decoration: here the cadenzas are by Radu Lupu and are a bit quirkier than necessary.

This gargantuan 35-disc set of Alfred Brendel's complete Vox, Turnabout, and Vanguard recordings released in late 2008, concurrent with his retirement from concert life, will be mandatory listening for anyone who reveres the Austrian virtuoso. When these recordings were made between 1955 and 1975, Brendel was at the start of his international career, and his performances here have a fire, energy, and a drama that his later recordings sometimes lack. Brendel devotees, however, may also find his performances lack the intellectual rigor of his middle period recordings and the poetic depths of his later recordings. Compare his demonic account of Mozart's Twentieth Concerto here, for instance, with his more elegant later account. The difference is clear.