World-famous pianist and author Alfred Brendel dies at 94

Self-taught pianist Alfred Brendel, who was widely regarded as one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, was himself baffled by his success on the world stage. “I'm completely at a loss to explain why I made it,” the musician, who retired in December 2008 after a career spanning six decades, was quoted as saying in a documentary about his life and work.

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Brendel, who died on Tuesday aged 94 in London where he had lived for more than 50 years, had a reputation for being modest, self-effacing and intensely self-critical. He gave only short, quick bows when entering or leaving the stage of his always sell-out recitals. The Guardian said once he was never one “for fireworks and histrionics”.

But he was notoriously intolerant of unwanted noise during his concerts, and was even known to walk off stage if he felt disturbed by a loud hacking cough of an audience member. “If I belong to a tradition, it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what he should do and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed,” he once said.