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In front of the glass roof of a workshop, in the changing light of the winter sun, a piano and... Alfred Brendel who delivers the fruits of his research, his reflections and above all his extreme sensitivity about the last three sonatas of Schubert. Chantal Akerman’s sober production captures this mystery, this Schubertian charm mixed with despair that Brendel seems to know so well. After playing the first movement of the Sonata in C minor whose musical structure Akerman highlights (ABA) with two fixed shots, Alfred Brendel answers Mildred Clary’s questions. He evokes the differences between Schubert and the classics, both in the use of motifs and in the conception of form, or the relationship of the young composer with Beethoven against whom he knew how to maintain independence and originality, something his contemporaries did not understand. not. Brendel, always on edge, plays, explains, then dives back into the music. Erudition and attention to detail in no way hamper musical sensitivity; on the contrary, Brendel perfectly renders this “romantic wandering“ of Schubert and plays his music as he describes it, like “a walker on the edge of the precipice“.
