The One-Armed Pianist’s Quest for Success

On Nov. 27, 1931, a new concerto by composer Maurice Ravel was premiered in Vienna. The work, a blending of traditional musical forms and modern jazz, was performed by pianist Paul Wittgenstein, whose virtuosity held the audience spellbound. Wittgenstein had personally commissioned the concerto, less to conform to his tastes than to fit his physique. This world-renowned concert pianist had only one arm.

Paul Wittgenstein became famous for the way in which he overcame a tragic accident that robbed him of his right arm, turning loss into innovation and creativity, and in the process inspiring a repertory of one-handed piano works. Born in Vienna in 1887, Paul was the son of self-made Austrian industrialist Karl Wittgenstein and older brother to the noted philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Raised in a cultured, wealthy environment, Paul had exceptional formative musical experiences due to the stature of his family, including having as frequent guests Brahms, Mahler, and Clara Schumann, and playing duets with none other than Richard Strauss. The young man was thus groomed to support and encourage the arts financially, as did his parents; yet Paul’s early precocity for music guaranteed that he would be no mere musical dilettante and philanthropist.

He began to study piano with Malvine Bree; quick progress led him to the studio of the illustrious Polish virtuoso and teacher Theodor Leschetizky, himself a pupil of Czerny. It was in part the influence of Leschetizky and the blind composer Josef Labor, with whom he studied theory, which prompted him to seek a professional career. There is little doubt, however, that another significant influence was the pressure he felt to succeed as part of a tremendously successful family.

Paul made his public debut in Vienna in 1913; interestingly, his left hand technique was favorably commented upon in these early concerts. The outbreak of World War I prevented further progress, however, as he was called up in 1914. Then came the tragedy: in the assault on Russian Poland, Paul was wounded and taken prisoner; the Russian surgeons had to amputate his right arm. It was a year before he was exchanged and repatriated, by which time, he had, as he wrote, “determined upon the plan of training myself to become a one-armed pianist, at least to attempt it.” First, however, he returned to the military, serving in Italy until the conclusion of the war.

Upon returning to Vienna, Paul began to practice seven hours a day. Leschetizky having died, he taught himself, evolving a new pedagogical technique (which he would later publish as The School for the Left Hand). His few performances at this time were of works composed for him by his former teacher Labor. After three years of intense practice and research into works written or arranged for the left hand, he began a performing and teaching career that would last the remaining 40 years of his life. His results were such that numerous listeners swore that he had two hands; his efforts were immediately hailed as a new heroism by a battle-scarred Europe.

He began to use his means and influence to commission many new works for the left hand alone. Strauss, impressed with Wittgenstein’s success with exercises that he had written for him, composed for him the Paregon and Panathenaezug. Other notable commissions included Britten’s Diversions, a chamber suite by Korngold, and concerti from Hindemith and Prokofiev. The work with which Wittgenstein became synonymous was Maurice Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand, performed worldwide. It should be noted that Wittgenstein sometimes did not care for the compositions (Prokofiev); neither did the composers his interpretations at times (Britten, Ravel).

The Wittgenstein family was Christian but was nevertheless subject to Nazi racial laws due to a Jewish grandfather; Paul left Austria for the United States permanently in 1938, settling in New York and becoming an American citizen in 1946. While in the United States he taught privately and at the Ralph Wolf Conservatory and Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart. He passed away in New York at the age of 73; the historical novel The Crown Prince, by John Barchilon, is based on Wittgenstein’s remarkable life. Wittgenstein also wrote a School for the Left Hand (1957). It runs to three volumes, and contains the following:

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Wittgenstein – School for the Left Hand

Volume 1. Exclusively drills.

Volume 2. Thirteen of Wittgenstein’s own arrangements:

Bach: Violin sonata in F minor, 3rd. movement
Beethoven: Piano sonata op. 10 nr. 3, Largo
Beethoven: Piano sonata op. 57, Allegro assai
Brahms: Variations op 21, variation nr. 7
Chopin: Scherzo nr. 1 op. 20 (excerpts)
Chopin: Etude op. 25 nr. 11 (Double notes)
Chopin: Etude op. 10 nr. 12 (Revolutionary)
Chopin: Etude op. 10 nr. 12 (Revolutionary) 2. version
Haydn: String quartet op. 76 nr. 3, 2nd. movement, variation nr. 2
Haberbier: Poetic Studies nr. 20 (Tremolo)
Anton Rubinstein: Etude on a wrong note
Johann Strauss: Morgenblätter
Johann Strauss: Mein Lebenslauf (excerpts)

Volume 3. A collection of Wittgenstein’s own arrangements and with Brahms’ Bach-arrangement:

Prelude nr. 1 in C major from the first book of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier
Prelude nr. 3 from Kleine Präludien
Gigue from Partita in B flat major
Flute sonata in E flat major, Sicilienne
Bach-Gounod: Ave Maria
Bach-Brahms: Chaconne in D minor from Solo Partita for violin nr. 2
Grieg: Lyric Pieces op. 43 nr. 4 Liten fugl (Little Bird)
Grieg: Lyric Pieces op. 43 nr. 1 Sommerfugl (Butterfly)
Grieg: Lyric Pieces op. 43 nr. 3 Melankoli
Haydn: Piano sonata in A flat major, 2nd. movement
Haydn: String Quartet op. 64 nr. 5, Adagio
Henselt: Etude op. 5 nr. 11 Liebeslied (Love Song)
Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte (Song Without Words) op. 67 nr. 1
Mendelssohn: A Summer Night’s Dream, Notturno
Mozart: Serenade for Winds KV 375, Adagio
Meyerbeer: Bathers’ choir from the opera The Huguenots
Puccini: Sailors’ choir from the opera Madame Butterfly
Schubert – Liszt: Du bist die Ruh
Schubert – Liszt: Meeresstille
Schumann: Jugendalbum (Album for the Youth), Melodie
Schumann: Jugendalbum (Album for the Youth), Kleine Studie
Schumann: Bunte Blätter (Coloured Leaves) op. 99 nr. 7, Schwermut
Schumann: Bunte Blätter (Coloured Leaves) op. 99 nr. 1
Wagner: Quintet from the opera Die meistersinger aus Nürnberg
Wagner – Liszt: Isoldes Liebestod from the opera Tristan und Isolde

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Wittgenstein died in 1961, and his wife died only a few years back (in 2002). After her death a wealth of musical items and antiques came to light, including a concerto for the left hand by Hindemith titled Piano Music with Orchestra (Piano: Left Hand), Opus 29 which Wittgenstein had rejected and which had never seen the light of day until Leon Fleisher gave the first performance of it in 2005.

“It was found in a locked room by the widow’s children,” explains Leon Fleisher, who lives in Baltimore and teaches there at the prestigious Peabody Conservatory of Music. “They just kind of came in and opened the drapes and shook out the dust. And in the same room with the Hindemith score was, according to one report, a lock of Beethoven’s hair, and, according to another report, a lock of Brahms’s.”

The piece was performed in December 2005 in Berlin, by Fleisher with the Berlin Philharmonic. The pianist describes it as having a “jauntiness” and “enormous drive.” It is from “a marvelous period of Hindemith’s creativity” and has a slow second movement that, by Fleisher’s estimation, is among the best things the composer ever wrote.

The work also is physically taxing to play. “For a younger man,” Fleisher jokes.

Here’s the story within the story: Wittgenstein, born in 1897 in Vienna, was a promising piano virtuoso who made his hometown debut in 1913, while still a teenager, but lost his right arm on the battlefield the following year.

Fleisher paints a picture of money, achievement, and tragedy in Wittgenstein’s world: He came from “a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna,” Fleisher explains. “They had one of the great salons of the time, turn of the century, in which Brahms was a frequent visitor as well as Mahler and Klimt, the painter.

“Wittgenstein’s sister was one of Klimt’s models for one of his sensual paintings. And Wittgenstein’s brother Ludwig was the famous philosopher.”

But the family patriarch, Karl, the father, was an overbearing industrialist who forbade three of the other children — Hans, Rudolph and Kurt — from pursuing musical careers. All three committed suicide.

Now, add Paul to the mix: “He loses his right arm,” Fleisher says, “and he was difficult to deal with.” And determined to keep performing. Paul Wittgenstein went on to commission left-handed concertos from Hindemith, Ravel, Prokofiev, Britten and others, and fought with most of them. There was a famous shouting match with Ravel; Wittgenstein thought the composer’s Concerto for the Left Hand — which is completely ravishing and today a classic — was “over-orchestrated,” Fleisher explains. “Not enough piano.”

“That isn’t what he’d paid for. And he insisted on the right to adjust certain passages and told Ravel that the performer is not the slave of the composer. And then Ravel shot back, ‘Yes, the performer is the slave.’ With which I agree.”

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Videos:

Excerpts from concert: Wittgenstein, performs Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto for Left Hand, Paris in 1933

Hear Nikolai Lugansky play the whole Concerto for Left Hand in D major by Maurice Ravel:

Continue: Part 2

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Further reading:

Works associated with Paul Wittgenstein

Read the Telegraph article about the famous and eccentric Wittgenstein family.

Check out Hans Brofeldts pages on Left Hand Piano Music including a catalogue with 700 works.