Volume 37, Number 18 · November 22, 1990
The Pianist and the Program
By Alfred Brendel
'Le concert, c'est moi.' When Liszt wrote to the Princess Belgiojoso that, in this pronouncement, he was affecting the style of Louis XIV, he had just launched a new type of public concert: the solo recital.[1] To be precise, the announcement in London used the plural 'Recitals on the Pianoforte,' starting on June 9, 1840—recitations of pieces of music, testimonies, one would guess, to both Liszt's declamatory playing and the romantic closeness of music and poetry. Hitherto, soloists contributed to a program that employed a variety of participants, including an orchestra. Joint recitals, fairly rare these days, were still somewhat frequent at the beginning of our century, when Busoni shared a concert platform with Ysaÿe or Melba.
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