Alfred Brendel, who celebrates his 85th birthday today, is the focus of a colossal 114-CD set, 'Alfred Brendel. The Complete Philips Recordings'. It gathers together his entire recorded legacy for the label from the late 1960s until his Farewell Concert in 2008. It includes two complete cycle of the Beethoven piano sonatas, three of the Beethoven piano concertos, the complete Mozart piano concertos as well as major surveys of music by Haydn. Mozart, Schubert, Liszt, Brahms and Schumann.

Alfred Brendel was presented with an early copy of the limited edition set (which retails for about £180) by members of the Universal team: Paul Moseley, Managing Director, Decca Classics; Costa Pilavachi, Senior VP Artists and Repertoire Universal Global Classics and Barry Holden, VP Catalogue, Universal Global Classics.

Brendel was given Gramophone's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010 and earlier in his career received Gramophone awards for discs of Mozart piano concertos (1977), Liszt piano works (1978, 1981 and 1982) and Haydn piano sonatas (1987). He was voted into Gramophone's Hall of Fame - writing about him at the time, his fellow-pianist Imogen Cooper remarked that 'Brendel has always stood alone in what he does. He was a very individual voice when I first met him more than 40 years ago – his concert life was on an upswing as he reached 40, but he had a large body of recordings already behind him that were evidence of a wide range of repertoire, delivered with insight and energy, and fuelled in their integrity by active interest in the visual arts, literature and humour.'