Adrian Brendel discusses Kagel’s ‘purer’ music

We’ve just grabbed a quick word with Adrian Brendel about tonight’s programme, which presents some of Mauricio Kagel’s more purely musical output.

MM51, a piece for piano and metronome from 1977, is bracketed by Kagel’s piano trios nos. 1 and 2. Kagel’s critical intelligence is much in evidence here: the way his absurdist and frankly comic techniques make us think about the warts-and-all nature of musical performance.

A more startling discovery, perhaps, is Kagel’s oblique appreciation of the romantic era. The first trio’s parodic homage to Schubertian forms finds itself concentrated in the second trio: a reminder, to those of a freewheeling disposition, of Beethoven’s intense late distillion of his musical vocabulary.

The rehearsal is about to start. More soon.