Alfred Brendel

Piano virtuoso who felt silence was important in music and comically chided coughers and sneezers

- Patrick Kidd

"The better we know a work," Alfred Brendel said, "the more it surprises us." That may explain why one of the best-loved postwar pianists kept returning to pieces, such as making three recordings of Beethoven's 32 sonatas. He thought afresh about every dot and slur, hoping to be delighted by a new understanding.

It was a diligence Brendel developed having been largely self-taught from the age of 16. He was no child prodigy, filled with divine inspiration, but enjoyed exploring how to play a piece using a Revox tape recorder he got as a teenager. Record, rewind, review, react. He felt it was his duty to work out what the score was telling the pianist to do, not for him to tell the piece how it should have been written.

"A teacher can be too influential," Brendel said. "I learned to distrust anything I hadn't figured out myself." His preparation extended to placing a mirror beside his home piano so he could see when his movements were not in concord with the music, and he often wore plasters on his fingers to protect his nails, a habit he'd begun aged 15.