[caption id="attachment_12925" align="alignright" width="84" caption="Maurice Ravel"][/caption] [VIDEO DEAD] It's a well-known story about how Maurice Ravel came to write his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. After Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein lost his right arm while fighting on the Russian front in World War One, he was determined to continue his career as a musician. He developed a formidable left-hand technique and began to adapt and arrange the piano literature for his own use. He also commissioned a number of composers to write for him, but is said to have told Prokofiev he couldn't understand the 4th Piano Concerto at all and complained to Richard Strauss that a one-handed pianist couldn't compete with a quadruple orchestra. Even when Ravel wrote his Concerto for the Left Hand, the long, solo cadenza which opened the work prompted Wittgenstein to gripe, "If I wanted to play without the orchestra, I wouldn't have commissioned a concerto!" [caption id="attachment_12927" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Jean-Yves Thibaudet"]
[/caption] Even Jean-Yves Thibaudet, when asked to perform it at the Proms in the early 1990's, initially refused. In fact, even at that point in his career, he hadn't even learned it, deciding it was ridiculous for him to play with one hand. How he ultimately came to perform it with them is an interesting story best told by him. Follow this link to read about Thibaudet's reluctant relationship with Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, and hear him discuss it below.-- Boyce Lancaster [youtube n9Uy3Y3drdg]