In the postscript to his 1998 book of poetry One Finger Too Many, the pianist Alfred Brendel cites among his muses an elderly woman who stopped in front of the bench on which he was sitting at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, pointed at him and asked: “Are you Woody Allen?”
The fact that he could be confused with the American actor and director is not in itself surprising: with his puckish face, quizzically raised eyebrows and thick-rimmed Eric Morecambe glasses, Brendel, who has died aged 94, did have the air of a comedian. It was an aura he relished and cultivated in his quirky poetry and it goes to the heart of his personality.
