Music and Dance Reviews : Brendel Begins Schubert Cycle at Pavilion

As predicted, the Age of Aquarius hasn’t arrived all at once, but in waves, the way a tide approaches the shore: in successive, ever-rising onslaughts. One of the signposts into this age has been renewed interest in the spiritual content of music, and in those composers--the Aquarian composers, like Mozart and Schubert, for instance--who represent the highest achievement of such content.

It could be no surprise, then, that the recital opening Alfred Brendel’s four-concert Schubert cycle in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center, Sunday night, was heavily attended; indeed, sold-out.

Nor that the public’s reaction to a program that not long ago might have been judged hopelessly esoteric was one of acclamation. Forget that a portion of that public attempted to destroy the event for others with an ill-timed and steady barrage of cough-sounds; if the noise-makers were not silenced, they were at least endured.

The Austrian pianist, as is his habit, did justice to the composer at hand, who is for him this season Schubert and Schubert alone. The offbeat program beginning this cycle offered the six Moments Musicaux (formerly called Opus 94); the “Wanderer” Fantasy; the two movement “Reliquie” Sonata, and the A-minor Sonata (Opus 143), D. 784.

Deep concentration, immaculate execution, structural projection and an unobtrusive keyboard manner remain the hallmarks of Brendel’s style. Clearly, the important thing is to deliver the musical experience. This Brendel does, without grandstanding or undue self-consciousness, without extra emphases on technique or endurance, without belaboring any of the obvious difficulties here to be found.

Where the often-neglected masterworks of Schubert are concerned, these considerable virtues encompass all the “interpretation” the pieces need. For a pianist of Brendel’s achievement, to grasp these works is to love them. And to share their treasures.

Particularly cherishable at this performance were the rich enigmas of the Moments Musicaux, given ripe but restrained expression in Brendel’s faceted playing, and the unfamiliar joys in the “Unfinished” Sonata in C, D. 840 (1825), sometimes called the “Reliquie” Sonata.

The pianist chose on this occasion to make something less than heroic out of the “Wanderer” Fantasy--to dwell on its reflectiveness rather than its bravado; the approach is valid, if unorthodox. Similarly, he made the usually extroverted A-minor Sonata more a matter of inner dialogue than of keyboard oratory or histrionics. In the process, no subtexts were lost.

At this first event, a single encore crowned the performance. It was by Schubert, of course, the “Ungarische Melodie.”