Some of us may puzzle over the Zen riddle about the sound of one hand clapping, but, thanks in large part to Paul Wittgenstein, we all have a pretty good idea of the sound of one hand playing.

I hope you’ll join me this morning on WPRB, as we observe the anniversary of the birth of Wittgenstein (1887-1961), a pianist from a immensely wealthy and rather eccentric Viennese family, who famously who lost his right arm in the First World War. Through hard work and the power of sheer will, he managed to return to the concert stage, using his fortune to commission many of the great composers of his time to write new works for the left hand alone.

Among the composers to take up the challenge were Sergei Bortkiewicz, Benjamin Britten, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Sergei Prokofiev, Franz Schmidt, Richard Strauss, and of course Maurice Ravel. We’ll hear Wittgenstein himself grapple with Ravel’s masterpiece in a 1937 concert recording.

We’ll also enjoy a work composed in 1923 by Paul Hindemith that remained unheard for 80 years, until its rediscovery in a Pennsylvania farmhouse in 2002, following the death of Wittgenstein’s widow. Wittgenstein retained exclusive performance rights to many of his commissions, and if he didn’t somehow connect with a work, it simply went unheard. Such was the case with Hindemith’s “Klaviermusik mit Orchester” and also Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 4.

In the case of the latter, composed in 1931, Wittgenstein was eventually convinced by Siegfried Rapp, another pianist who had lost his arm in the war, to allow him to give it its premiere in Berlin in 1956. The U.S. premiere was given by Rudolf Serkin, with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, in 1958. We’ll hear those same forces perform it this morning. Rapp will perform Bohuslav Martinu’s “Concertino for Piano (Left-Hand) and Orchestra.”

Leon Fleisher, who grappled with focal dystonia for 40 years, was the pianist who gave the Hindemith its belated premiere in 2004, with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. We’ll hear Fleisher, now a vibrant 87 years-old, perform it – and great deal else – this morning.

Get ready to rub shoulders with a lot of southpaws this week. Tune in from 6 to 11 ET to WPRB 103.3 FM or online at wprb.com. It will be wholly intentional, for a change, when nothing goes “right,” on Classic Ross Amico.