One finger too many

Alfred Brendel - internationally famous as the supreme interpreter of the piano music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt - is also a poet. Between concert engagements and recording sessions, he has found the time to write this collection of sardonic, wise, funny, and beautifully turned verses. Penetrating light is thrown on those parts of the author's endlessly subtle mind and sensibility which his devoted audiences can barely have guessed existed. The supernumerary finger of the book's title, the appearance of Brahms's smelly ghost, the war between the bearded and the beardless, the camel's loss of his humps, the appropriateness of laughter, the eventual appearance of Godot and the usefulness of identical twins are among the important subjects he tackles. With the help of Richard Stokes, Alfred Brendel has produced English versions of his original texts which go out to meet the reader with refreshing directness and wit.