PAUL WITTGENSTEIN

Paul Wittgenstein, the brother of the famous philosopher Ludwig became famous not only for his performances, but for the works that he commissioned.

Wittgenstein's is really a story of tragedy, and also one of his determination to champion that tragedy.

He made his debut to some measure of acclaim around 1913, and was then called up for active service; wounded in Russia he underwent the amputation of his right arm, and of course it looked as though his career as a concert pianist was over.

Whilst a prisoner of war he relieved his boredom by exercises on crates to strengthen his one hand, and after his return home, he determinedly worked on his technique and came back to public performance.

Of course the real problem was that there was little or no music for one hand, and after scouring library upon library, he realised that he needed to use his great wealth (the Wittgenstein's were one of the most wealthy Viennese families), in order to commission works from contemporary composers.

Given that his favourite composer was Mozart, there was a good chance that the composers of his day were not going to write music which was to his natural taste...and there were some heated arguments with different composers. He wrote to Prokofiev upon receiving the 4th Piano Concerto, and told him that he didn't understand one note of the music and would not play it! He made more than just a few changes to the Ravel Concerto for the Left Hand that Ravel cancelled the first official performance (although Wittgenstein had already performed it somewhere already!!) until Wittgenstein did concede to perform the work (pretty much) as the composer had intended, and some measure of peace resumed, and the official debut of the work went ahead.

Schmidt wrote a piece that he rather liked, and Richard Strauss wrote two...and whatever he thought of the Ravel concerto, it was certainly a useful piece for him, and has become so famous that it is currently part of the standard concert repertoire.

There is an amount of controversy over the quality of his performances...often critics who were usually terribly fierce about performers were rather complimentary about him...and yet at the same time there were those who could see the cracks in his art. After all, on the one hand there was the great achievement that he could make the piano sing and yet accompany at one and the same time with just the one hand, but he is also said to have played over loudly, and not always all that accurately.

His recordings do, alas, bear that up...and although some of them do have great interest and are impressive, there are some of his recordings that seriously bear him no favours. For instance, some of his solo pieces do simply sound as though one hand is doing all the work, and the gaps between either end of the keyboard which Wittgenstein tried hard to disguise, are actually quite clearly apparent.

Furthermore, in the concerto by Ravel his two recorded performances clearly illustrate his great dislike of the work. There is a tell-tale gap at the end of the orchestral introduction before the piano comes in at the very bottom of the keyboard. It is almost as if he dislikes it so much he cant bring himself to start! Having said that, there are aspects of both of his recordings which are of interest, and his obvious frustration at the loss of his arm is clearly evident in his interpretation of that Ravel work.

He did also record one of the Richard Strauss works, and that is in many ways a far more successful performance all round.

Paul Wittgenstein's wife was not only considerably younger than him, she was also blind and had an extensive Braille library of music - and was apparently a very proficient Beethoven expert. Wittgenstein died in 1961, and she died only a few years back. After her death a wealth of musical items and antiques came to light, including a concerto for the left hand by Hindemith which Wittgenstein had rejected and which had never seen the light of day until Leon Fleisher gave the first performance of it around 2005/6.