Mailbox
In Mailbox this week: We reveal the identity of January’s mystery man and announce the names of the winners. Listeners quoted: David Eldridge, Jayanta Chakrabarty, Tracy A, Dean Bonanno, Barbara Ziemba, Catherine Agboola, Colin Law, Heike Lemon, Charles Konecny.
Hello and welcome to Mailbox. Today we will finally reveal the name of our January mystery person and announce the names of the winners of our little quiz. We have once again received a great many answers, nearly all of them correct, but sadly, we had to exclude some of them from the draw for being copied and pasted lock, stock and barrel from internet sources. Even though they contained a lot of interesting information we would not be able to quote them without being guilty of plagiarism.
Now, onto our January mystery person. David Eldridge from the United Kingdom sent us this answer:
“This month's mystery personality is Alfred Brendel, born in Wiesenberg, Czechoslovakia, now known as Loučná nad Desnou in the Olomouc region of the Czech Republic. Brendel had an extensive career in London culminating in him being considered one of the greatest pianists of all time. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 1989 and the Danish Sonning award in 2002. He gave what he plans to be his last public concert on 18th December 2008 at the Musikverein in Vienna with the Mozart piano concerto K271 in E flat. His old friend Charles Mackerras was conducting.”
Jayanta Chakrabarty writes from India:
“His achievements and awards are almost countless – the first pianist to have recorded Beethoven's complete piano works; one of the very few to have recorded the piano concertos of Mozart and whose efforts contributed immensely to retrieving Schubert's piano sonatas from obscurity.”
Tracy A sent her answer from Missouri:
“I usually have to think long and hard about your quiz, I rarely know the answer, especially if it's science related, as it so often is. So thank you for asking a music question. I grew up thinking that Brendel was Austrian, as he spent so much of his career there, and it wasn't until my midlife obsession with all things Czech that I started to realize that so many of my favorite ‘German’ or ‘Austrian’ composers and writers are actually, and totally, Czech.”
I’m afraid Czechs cannot really claim Alfred Brendel since he spent so little time in Czechoslovakia, nevertheless his connection to this country qualified him for our mystery person competition.
Dean Bonanno writes from Connecticut:
“The answer to the competition about the Czech composer is Alfred Brendel. Interesting, Brendel came from a family that had no musical training. In addition, as a teenager, Brendel was sent to what was then Yugoslavia to dig ditches where he suffered frostbite.”
Barbara Ziemba lives in New York:
“What I found amazing about him in my search was that he was born into a non-musical family and received very little formal training, attended a few master classes, was mainly self taught but rose to be one of the world's greatest classical pianists. Brendel was not only an accomplished pianist, but composed, was a published poet and author as well as a painter. An amazing man of many great talents.”
From Nigeria, Catherine Agboola wrote:
“He distinguished himself among his peers by the depth of the message that his music conveys. He was able to interpret the works of major pioneers. As he celebrates his 60 years of success, I join the millions of humanity to wish him well.”
Colin Law writes from New Zealand:
“Alfred Brendel was born in Vízmberk, Czechoslovakia on January 5th 1931. His ancestors were German, Austrian, Italian and Slav. The geography remains the same while the names change: Vizmberk, or Wiesenberg in German, is now Loučná nad Desnou in the Czech Republic, north of Olomouc and towards the border with Poland. Some sources add further confusion: ‘Brendel was born in 1931 in the Moravian town of Wiesenberg, now in the far east of Germany’ according to a UK newspaper which apparently lacks an atlas!”
Heike Lemon follows our programmes in Germany:
“The January Mystery man is Alfred Brendel. He actually gave a concert in Hannover, Germany, which is where I live, so I remember reading about it in the local newspaper.”
Last but not least, Charles Konecny writes from Ohio:
“For someone whose family was not musical, had only a few piano lessons, was largely self-taught, and then to rise to one of the worlds greatest pianists, is truly amazing. Not to mention that he kept it up for 60 years. He deserved his final performance in Vienna's Musikverein Golden Auditorium. I understand he received a 20-minute standing ovation.”
Our February question was first aired last week and we have already received several dozen answers. The competition runs until the end of the month, so let me repeat the question once again:
In February we are looking for the name of the outstanding Austrian-American mathematician, logician and philosopher who was born in 1906 in the Moravian city of Brno and died in 1978 in Princeton, New Jersey.
Please send us your answers by the end of February to [email protected] or Radio Prague, 12099 Prague, Czech Republic which are also the addresses for your questions and comments regarding our broadcasts and life in the Czech Republic. Until next week, thanks for listening and take care.
