Paul Wittgenstein

Austrian-born pianist

• Born: November 5, 1887
• Birthplace: Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Austria)
• Died: March 3, 1961
• Place of death: Manhasset, Long Island, New York

Despite losing his right arm in World War I, Wittgenstein created a career as a left-handed pianist, arranging and commissioning compositions for left-hand pianists.

Early Life

Paul Wittgenstein (VIHT-gehn-shtin) was born into the wealthy and distinguished Jewish Wittgenstein family of Vienna. His brother was the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Paul Wittgenstein’s father made a fortune as an industrialist and was a prominent patron of artists, writers, and musicians. Wittgenstein grew up in the midst of the progressive arts of Vienna. His father collected paintings and music manuscripts, and most of the famous musicians of Vienna (including Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann, Gustav Mahler, Bruno Walter, and Richard Strauss) were frequent quests at his home. His mother was a pianist and an organist, and Wittgenstein at an early age played the piano and developed an interest in a career as a pianist.

Wittgenstein was educated at a gymnasium (a German secondary school), and his father wanted for him a career in business or in engineering; Wittgenstein first worked in a bank, whose routine work he detested. His father’s demands for high achievement and success for his children led to pressures and tensions that affected all in the family; neuroses, nervous tensions, and suicides were rampant. Nonetheless, his father’s demands stimulated in Wittgenstein a capacity for hard work, focused energy, idealism, and a striving for success as a serious artist.

Despite his father’s wishes, Wittgenstein was allowed to pursue a career as a pianist and a patron, which his family’s wealth permitted. He studied piano with Malvine Brée and Theodor Leschetizky and composition with Josef Labor. Wittgenstein gave his first recitals in the winter of 1913-1914 to great acclaim.

Wittgenstein was called up for the Austrian army at the beginning of World War I, and he was immediately wounded in Russian Poland. His right arm was amputated, and he was taken as a Russian prisoner. After he was exchanged back to Austria in 1915, he resolved to continue his career, and as a left-handed pianist, he gave five recitals. He returned to war service in 1917.

Life’s Work

After World War I, Wittgenstein used his independence and his wealth to devote himself with great energy, sacrifice, and dedication to a career as a virtuoso left-handed pianist. At first, he withdrew from the public and became a recluse, practicing seven hours a day. He, of course, needed music for the left hand alone, so he scoured libraries, museums, and used-music shops. Remarkably, there already were many original compositions and arrangements for left hand alone, including works by Brahms, Camille Saint-Saëns, Max Reger, Aleksandr Scriabin, and Leopold Godowsky. Following the practice of Franz Liszt and Godowsky, Wittgenstein began to write his own arrangements of works for left hand alone.

Wittgenstein resumed his concert career in 1921, and for the next forty years he appeared in solo recitals and with every important string quartet, orchestra, and great conductor. His playing was praised for brilliant technique, color, musical idealism, and depth of feeling. His virtuosity and the brilliant effects he achieved made listeners forget he was playing with only one hand.

Wittgenstein taught privately, and in 1931 he began teaching at the New Vienna Conservatory. He was a patient and an inspiring teacher, but occasionally he was brusque and severe; guided by idealism toward music, he could also be a stern disciplinarian.

Wittgenstein embarked on a program of commissioning new works, and the resulting compositions are one of his important contributions to twentieth century music. The best-known and still-often-performed work for piano and orchestra was Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D (1930). Other prominent works he commissioned include Benjamin Britten’s Diversions on a Theme (1940), Sergei Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 4 in B Flat (1931), Paul Hindemith’s Piano Concerto (1924), and Richard Strauss’s piano concerti Parergon zur Symphonia Domestica (1924; The Parergon on Symphonia Domestica) and Panathenäenzug (1926).

Wittgenstein was a nineteenth century musician at heart, and while he commissioned works from some of the twentieth century’s most prominent composers, he often found the works impossible to understand or to appreciate. As a result many, including the works by Prokofiev and Hindemith, he never performed. Wittgenstein thought the concerti by Labor and Strauss were more musically worthy than the popular Ravel concerto. Wittgenstein saw the works he commissioned as collaborations, but composers sometimes objected to the alterations he made to their scores.

His father raised Wittgenstein and his siblings as Christians. Because they had Jewish grandparents, they were considered full Jews under Germany’s Nuremberg race laws. At the Anschluss with Austria in 1938, Wittgenstein escaped, and his brother Ludwig was already safe in England. All the family assets in Germany and Switzerland (estimated to be worth about six billion dollars) were surrendered to the Nazis in exchange for the safety of Wittgenstein’s sisters, who wished to live in Vienna. In the negotiations, Wittgenstein’s sisters apparently sided with Nazi officials, which alienated Wittgenstein, and he no longer had contact with them.

Wittgenstein made his debut in North America in 1934, playing the Ravel concerto in Montreal, Boston, and New York. In 1938, Wittgenstein settled in New York, where he taught privately and at colleges until 1960. He became an American citizen in 1946. The Philadelphia Musical Academy awarded him an honorary doctorate of music in 1958. He died at the age of seventy-three in Manhasset, Long Island.

Significance

In spite of the wartime loss of his right arm, Wittgenstein achieved a worldwide reputation as a virtuoso left-handed pianist and teacher, who commissioned a number of important left-hand works from leading composers of the twentieth century. From his years developing a technique for the left hand alone, Wittgenstein compiled a pedagogical method that he set forth in his three-volume School for the Left Hand (1957), in which he reveals many of the special techniques he developed, including inventing new music symbols and new methods of pedaling.

Bibliography

Flindell, E. Fred. “Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961): Patron and Pianist.” The Music Review 32 (1971): 107-127. An extended account of Wittgenstein’s career, giving special attention to his relationships with composers from whom he commissioned works; includes list of compositions commissioned.

Harvey, Trevor. “Paul Wittgenstein: A Personal Reminiscence.” The Gramophone 39 (June, 1961): 2. A memoir of Wittgenstein by a friend.

Suchy, Irene, Allan Janik, and Georg A. Predota, eds. Empty Sleeve: Der Musiker und Mäzen Paul Wittgenstein. Innsbruck, Austria: Studienverlag, 2006. This collection (the title of which translates as “Empty Sleeve: The Musician and Patron Paul Wittgenstein) contains many essays in English on all aspects of Wittgenstein’s career, family, and works composed for him.

Waugh, Alexander. The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War. New York: Doubleday, 2008. A history of the famous Viennese Wittgenstein family, which produced the left-hand piano virtuoso Paul and the philosopher Ludwig.