Paul Wittgenstein ( German: Paul Wittgenstein ; November 5, 1887 , Vienna - March 3, 1961 , Manhasset , Nassau County, New York ) - Austrian and American pianist , teacher, brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), known for playing piano concerts only with the left hand, after amputation of the right hand during the First World War.
| Paul Wittgenstein him. Paul wittgenstein | |
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| basic information | |
| Date of Birth | November 5, 1887 |
| Place of Birth | Vienna , Austrian Empire |
| Date of death | March 3, 1961 (73 years old) |
| Place of death | Manhasset , Nassau County, New York , USA |
| A country |  Austria-Hungary ,  Austria  USA |
| Professions | pianist , music teacher |
| Instruments | The piano |
Content
Biography
Career start
Born in a family of Austrian steel tycoon of Jewish origin Karl Wittgenstein.
He was a nephew of the famous violinist and composer Josef Joachim .
He studied piano with Malvina Bre and Theodor Leshetitsky , and music theory with Joseph Lab .
He made his debut in Vienna in 1913 , but the very next year, with the outbreak of World War I , he went to the front.
During an attack in Poland near Zamosc, he was wounded in the elbow and captured. His right arm was amputated. He was in a prisoner of war camp in Omsk , but under the Red Cross program for the exchange of prisoners of war, Wittgenstein was released and celebrated Christmas in 1915 in Vienna.
In 1917, he was awarded the Great Silver Medal of Courage. Despite his disability, he served until 1918 on the Italian front in a bar.
Left- Pianist Career
Even in Omsk, in a prisoner of war camp, he decided to pursue his career as a pianist using only his left hand.
Thus, he repeated the achievement of pianist Geza Zichi , who had lost his hand half a century earlier and had not given up his career.
Through the Danish ambassador to Russia, he turned to his old teacher Joseph Labor , who was blind, asking him to write a concert for his left hand. Labor responded quickly, saying that he had already begun work on the fragment.
After the war ended, Wittgenstein worked intensively, arranging famous works for one-handed performance and performing new compositions written for him by Labor.
He performed arrangements for the works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Mozart, Meyerbeer, Puccini, Schubert, Schumann, Johann Strauss and Wagner for left-handed performance.
Soon he began to give concerts. There was a lot of criticism about his one-handed performance, but he survived.
From 1931 to 1938 Wittgenstein taught in Vienna.
In 1934, he toured the ocean for the first time, performing Ravel’s Second Concerto in Montreal , then performed the same program in Boston and New York with the Boston Symphony Orchestra .
In 1938, the pianist emigrated to the United States, where he continued to teach both privately and at the New Rochelle Conservatory and College in Manhattanville .
In 1958, the Philadelphia Academy of Music Wittgenstein was awarded the title of Doctor of Music.
The mastery of pianistic technique allowed Wittgenstein to successfully perform compositions comparable in complexity even for a pianist with two hands. He toured Europe a lot, playing his own arrangements of the classical repertoire for the left hand.
Especially for Wittgenstein, the compositions of contemporary composers were written, including:
“Paregon to the“ Home Symphony “” and “Procession of Pan-Fenians” by R. Strauss ,
Concert No. 2 M. Ravel ,
"Diversions" by B. Britten ,
Concert No. 4 S. Prokofiev ,
Concert No. 2 S. Bortkevich .
Erich Korngold , Franz Schmidt , Juliusz Wolfson and many other composers also worked on Wittgenstein’s order.
Wittgenstein is the author of The Left Hand School, published in London in 1957.
The pianist’s life was at the core of John Barchillon’s novel The Crown Prince (1984).
Links
- Paul Wittgenstein on the Allmusic website
- Paul Wittgenstein (inaccessible link) in Oksana Mysina ’s program “Where Words End ...” on Orpheus radio with the participation of Alexey Panov