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Building a Library

Jeremy Sams chooses his favourite recording of Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.

Despite having lost his right arm fighting on the Russian front during World War I, Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein was determined to continue his concert career. To that end he commissioned concertos from Richard Strauss, Franz Schmidt, Korngold, Britten and Prokofiev and Ravel.

To Strauss, Wittgenstein complained that he'd orchestrated too heavily, and he returned Prokofiev's concerto saying he didn't understand it and wasn't going to play it. When he took issue with Ravel's long opening cadenza ('If I wanted to play without the orchestra, I wouldn’t have commissioned a concerto!'), Ravel refused to change anything and Wittgenstein played the concerto as written at its 1932 premiere in Vienna.

It's a dark, compelling, wonderfully orchestrated work in one movement – and a dazzling display of Ravel's huge resourcefulness and skill in managing the solo part which always seems too impossibly rich and virtuosic to emanate from just one hand.

Jeremy's Building a Library choice:
Krystian Zimerman (piano)
London Symphony Orchestra
Pierre Boulez (conductor)
Deutsche Grammophon 4492132

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