Elegant Thunderer

Typecasting is a hazard not only for actors but for pianists. Yet for listeners it has certain advantages. There is always a little extra pleased surprise when a celebrated Beethoven thunderer like Viennese Pianist Alfred Brendel also proves a fine interpreter of Mozart, as he just has in this summer's Mostly Mozart Festival at New York's Philharmonic Hall. Folding his gawky body (6 ft. 1 1/2 in., 164 lbs.) down on the piano stool like some large, clumsy bird, Brendel at times brought an almost wren-like elegance to the formalized passion of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major (K. 453).

Even in this age of great technicians, Brendel's keyboard marksmanship is so remarkable that he can afford to shrug off mere accuracy. "If I miss a few notes," he says, "I don't care as long as the musical purpose is clear. When I remember performances which have impressed me, few of them were note perfect. I don't want to be perfect at any expense. Perfection has done too much harm already in music."

Classic Bounds. All pianists have to compromise between force and agility in order to combine maximum sonority with maximum speed. Brendel's playing shows no compromise. He gives most of the credit to Edwin Fischer, the Swiss pianist and teacher who was known as both an intellectual classicist and a keyboard technician. Like Fischer, he is able to play passionately without breaking the bounds of classicism.

Brendel began playing at six, made his debut at 17. A year later he won Italy's Concorso Busoni, one of the most demanding piano competitions in Europe. By the time he was 30, his affinity for Beethoven's music had asserted itself, and Vox, a record company that appreciated both his brilliance and his beginner's price, hired him for a vast project: 36 long-playing sides of Beethoven's piano works. In a fit of fiction, the company added its own credits to Brendel's. He has been plagued by their inventiveness ever since.

"I am not, alas, the fortunate possessor of Italian primitives," he tiredly explains. "I do not live in a house once occupied by Beethoven. I do not, to my regret, own one of Beethoven's pianos. These are myths, fantasies, inventions. That company got nearly everything wrong except my birthday."

Slightly Monkish. The birthday was 40 years ago, though Brendel looks older; his high-domed, intellectual forehead is balding from two directions, and his pale eyes and thick glasses give him af slightly monkish appearance. Says Iris Brendel, his beautiful, Argentine-born wife, "We once received a letter from an unknown admirer which said, I only know you from your records. Are you as beautiful as you are talented?' We sent back a picture and that settled that!"

Brendel finds more beauty in old works than in contemporary ones. "I play everything from Mozart to Schoenberg," he says. "I'm interested in new music, but I don't think I can play it. Wrong temperament. I admire Chopin; that's one of the reasons I don't play him. He eats up a performer. Schubert is my antidote for Beethoven." Brendel also wants to get into more Haydn. Which leaves only one great ambition. "What I really want," he concludes, eying his profile in a mirror, "is to play the lead in a Frankenstein movie."

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