Word: beethovens
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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. 1½ 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...
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...
...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...
...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...
MAJOR ALFRED M. WORDEN, 39, the Command-module pilot, is the crew's freest spirit. He likes good food and drink, plays his baby grand piano for visitors to his bachelor flat (everything from Beethoven to bop) and sleeps in a bed topped with a canopy of aluminum reflectors. "It gets me up in the morning," Worden explains. "I can't stand looking at all those ugly faces." Born in Jackson, Mich., Worden graduated from West Point in 1955, switched to the Air Force and later took a master's degree in astronautical and aeronautical engineering...