Alfred Brendel [Jiyang Chen]

THERE was a grand piano in Alfred Brendel’s Hampstead home, and it provided an insight into the character of the world-famous concert pianist, whose funeral took place at St John’s Hampstead on Monday.

If visitors to his Well Walk home lifted the lid to the piano, a skeletal hand popped out.

It was a joke that reflected Alfred’s humour as well as his love of kitschy ornaments and, of course, the fact the piano played centre stage to his life and career.

A picture of a pianist laughing maniacally, watched by a deadly serious audience, also graced his walls.

Born in 1931 in what is now the Czech Republic, he spent some of his childhood in Austria during the war.

He did not come from a family of musicians nor was he surrounded by music as a child, but his talent was such that he studied at the Graz Conservatory in Austria.  He said music lessons for him ended aged 16 and from that point on he preferred to be self-taught and work out how best to play the piano himself.

He said that tutors could all too often put their own foibles and tics into the hands of their pupils. He wanted to guide his own development.

Mr Brendel settled in Hampstead in 1971, and would also spend time at a home in Dorset.

He enjoyed a daily walk across the Heath and loved the village.

He had married his first wife, Iris Heymann-Gonzala, in 1960. They had a daughter, Doris, an acclaimed musician.

He later married Irene Semler in 1975, and they had three children: Adrian, Katharina and Sophie.

He became the first pianist to record the entire piano works of Beethoven, and he toured the world: in 1982 and 1983 he completed 77 recitals in 11 cities across Europe and America. He did the same again in the 1990s and in 1999 joined Sir Simon Rattle and the Wiener Philharmoniker to capture new recordings of all five Beethoven Piano Concertos.

Mr Brendel found inspiration everywhere. One collection of essays, published by Faber, was called The Lady from Arezzo and was inspired by a tailor’s dummy in an Italian town.

He brought it home with him and it sat in his attic, prompting a new book that brought together his love of nonsense with his love of music.

And his concerts were always sell-outs.

Publisher Jeremy Robson, who would go on to print Mr Brendel’s writings, said: “We never missed any, finding ourselves in the middle of an extraordinary audience that seemed like a who’s who of intellectual Britain – Ernst Gombrich, AJP Taylor, Isaiah Berlin, Antonia Fraser, Bernard Levin, Stephen Spender, Al Alvarez, Hans Keller, always the first in line.”

Mr Robson, also remembered how Mr Brendel came to a housewarming party he was throwing, and in the noise of the melee, he retreated to an upstairs room for some quiet: “One of our guests was Spike Milligan, who, when he heard Brendel was upstairs, asked if he could go up and talk to him, which he did, and they remained closeted together for an hour,” he said.