James Kearney complained about Brendel.

I'm very much in two minds about him; I think he can be very inconsistent.
I generally agree with your comments about his pianism - he can never
achieve a really light touch, his dynamic range is limited, and he
over-pedals and sometimes pounds.  But then again, in his latest live
Hammerklavier, I thought he was technically very impressive, with a very
rich and subtly shaded sound and finely differentiated voicing.  Musically
I think he is much more interesting live than in the studio.  His studio
efforts are metronomic and professorial, but I've heard two live recordings
of Beethoven sonatas, and there he takes far greater risks - pointed
rhetoric (sometimes even overdone for my taste), varied repeats etc.  But
I heard the 5th concerto with Rattle on the radio recently and couldn't get
through it, it was so stodgy.  It's not the slowness as such, but the touch
is too heavy and the note-values are observed too literally, so that the
figuration just chugs along rather than coalescing into meaningful
gestures.

I agree about Fischer and Furtwangler's wonderful 5th - that was the
version that hooked me onto the concerto.  Arrau's version is very
rewarding too - also on the slow side, but worlds away from Brendel.
Horowitz's recording I can't stand - edgy and metronomic, surprisingly
colourless, with little sense either of large-scale rhetoric or of
characterization of detail.  There's something very timid about the whole
affair - it's as if the ghost of Toscanini were standing behind him.  And
then there's his awful doctored piano.

Felix Delbruck
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