{"product_id":"alfred-brendel-playing-the-human-game-9780714859866","title":"Playing the human game","description":"\u003cp\u003e« Alfred Brendel's poems are a delight. His voice is wonderfully eccentric, droll, sly, mischievous - the same brilliant fingers making a new sound. »\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eHarold Pinter, Playwright\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e« Among his many great gifts as a pianist, Alfred Brendel has a genius for bringing out the wit in unexpected composers, not least because he himself is an anarchic spirit, a witty man with wide and idiosyncratic tastes : for Baroque architecture and nonsense verse, Dada art and the works of Edward Gorey. All this is reflected in Brendel's poems. They are trapdoors into his dream-life - funny, sly and deeply subversive, especially of his own grandeur as a musician. »\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAl Alvarez, critic and poet\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e« Brendel is a master of the laconic tone, with striking formulation and rhythmic command. From wordplay via self-caricature to outright nonsense he controls a keyboard of humour that opens worlds. »\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAndreas Breitenstein, literary editor, \u003ci\u003eneue zürcher zeitung\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e« Alfred Brendel's poems have a great deal of wit and charm, and also a great deal of surrealistic strangeness and menace. That's what makes them so good - the mixture of opposites, sometimes on terms with one another and sometimes quarrelling. »\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAndrew Motion, poet laureate 1999-2009\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e« Alfred Brendel, the poet, is a master of interruptions, of swerves and indirections, of jokes that land where no one is looking. A lucid hilarity - sometimes tinged with delicate melancholy - reigns throughout these poems. »\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMichael Wood, critic\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Phaidon Press Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Used - good","offer_id":53494479487318,"sku":"9780714859866-G","price":26.79,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0925\/5829\/5382\/files\/product_image_9780714859866_1_9eb19b78-d2d5-47f6-9691-23558c3dda4b.jpg?v=1778174766","url":"https:\/\/www.momoxbooks.com\/products\/alfred-brendel-playing-the-human-game-9780714859866","provider":"momoxbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}