An accurate assessment of the contributions of Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961) is bound to come across as a left-handed compliment. Only, as applied to Wittgenstein, the concept is perhaps not entirely negative.
Tomorrow is the birthday anniversary of this remarkable Austrian pianist, who lost his right arm during the First World War. Rather than let it hamper his career, he went on to commission some of the great composers of his day to write new works for the left hand alone. The most famous of these is the “Concerto for the Left Hand” by Maurice Ravel.
Tomorrow morning on WPRB, we’ll have an opportunity to listen to a number of these, including works by Sergei Bortkiewicz, Benjamin Britten, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Sergei Prokofiev, Franz Schmidt, and Richard Strauss. We’ll also hear the world premiere recording, made by Leon Fleisher – another famous pianist who’s had right hand issues – of “Klaviermusik mit Orchester” by Paul Hindemith, a piece rediscovered in a Pennsylvania farmhouse, following the death of Wittgenstein’s widow, only in 2002.
Wittgenstein had his limitations. He had very conservative tastes in music and rejected some of the works he commissioned, like the Prokofiev and the Hindemith, which he deemed too modern. Since he owned the exclusive performance rights, this often led to the works going unheard for decades. Also, the recordings we have of him performing the Ravel concerto will undoubtedly raise a few eyebrows with the pianist’s “improvements” to what is already a perfect work, likely the best of its kind.
But he had an iron will to flourish, where many would have lapsed into despair, and the good sense to use the Wittgenstein fortune to enrich the repertoire in general and the left hand literature in particular.
As time allows, we’ll also hear works championed by Siegfried Rapp and Otakar Hollman, two other pianists maimed in the war, as well as pieces written for Fleisher and Gary Graffman, modern day keyboard artists who’ve grappled with focal dystonia, and a few unrelated left-hand contributions by earlier composers such as Johannes Brahms, Camille Saint-Saëns and Alexander Scriabin.
I hope you’ll me tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 ET, at WPRB 103.3 FM or online at wprb.com. We lend a hand to Paul Wittgenstein on Classic Ross Amico.