Striking a serious chord ... Brendel in Aldeburgh in June 2007. Photograph: Jonathan Player / Rex Features
Alfred Brendel has announced that next year will be his last on the concert platform. At the age of 76, his agent told the Chicago Tribune on Monday that he "just wants to stop".
But can a pianist ever retire? The huge black piano, dominating the living room at home, will probably magnetise as much as it always did. It won't be a question of shutting the office door and never having to see it again. Over the years a piano becomes an awfully demanding household god, always hungry for tribute.
Speaking to an interviewer, Brendel once commented that although playing is harder as you get older, you also feel sometimes that you play better than in the old days. He's not referring, of course, to an improvement in piano technique, but rather to a feeling of immersion in the music and identification with its content and message. This is something for which there's no shortcut. You know it when you hear it.
Speaking personally, I find the departures of older artists doubly sad because there's now so much focus on the celebrity young. No longer are people expected to pay their dues, as they used to say in the jazz world, before they can be taken seriously. Young musicians, with very little life experience to deepen their music, are now expected to be at the height of their earning powers when they're at their nubile best. They have to be virtuosi of media and image manipulation. This was made clear by music agent Steve Abbott at the final of BBC2's Classical Star when he memorably said, "I'm looking for someone who can work the system".
Yet artistic integrity doesn't always go hand in hand with knowing how to work the system. It may do, but it's far more likely to develop slowly, or to be found in people whose appearance doesn't conform to current "branding" requirements. Listeners who are drawn to a concert by glamour photos and media-savvy interviews may well be disappointed by the musical experience.
Brendel, on the other hand, has always stood for seriousness of purpose. He's an intellectual and proud to be so. He represents a middle-European tradition of music making that puts the music centre-stage, understands its historical context and regards it as profoundly meaningful. That approach now begins to look endangered. But it is just what serious music needs. Without it, we're left with the musical equivalent of those hothouse roses that look good on the day you buy them, but have no staying power - and no scent.
