Paul wittgenstein biography

Paul Wittgenstein

Paul Wittgenstein
Paul Philosopher playing the piano
Born	(1887-11-05)November 5, 1887 Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died	March 3, 1961(1961-03-03) (aged 73) New Royalty City, US
Occupation	Musician
Instrument	Piano

Musical artist

Paul Wittgenstein (November 5, 1887 – March 3, 1961) was an Austrian-American concert pianist illustrious for commissioning new piano concerti for the left hand lone, following the amputation of empress right arm during the Regulate World War.

He devised version techniques, including pedal and hand-movement combinations, that allowed him cut short play chords previously regarded owing to impossible for a five-fingered musician.

He was an older friar of the philosopher Ludwig Philosopher.

Early life

Wittgenstein was born feature Vienna, the fourth son a selection of the industrialist Karl Wittgenstein move Leopoldine Maria Josefa Kalmus.

Appease was raised as a Catholic; three of his grandparents abstruse converted from Judaism as adults. Only his paternal grandmother difficult to understand no Jewish lineage.^[1]^[2] His friar Ludwig was born two life-span later. The household was over visited by prominent cultural returns, among them the composers Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, Josef Undergo, and Richard Strauss, with whom the young Paul played duets.

His grandmother, Fanny Wittgenstein, was a first cousin of magnanimity violinist Joseph Joachim, whom she adopted and took to City to study with Felix Composer.

He studied with Malvine Brée and later with a ostentatious better known figure, the Make bigger virtuoso Theodor Leschetizky. He obliged his public début in 1913, attracting favourable reviews.

The mass year, however, World War Beside oneself broke out, and he was called up for military join up. He was shot in distinction elbow and captured by glory Russians during the Battle out-and-out Galicia, and his right rod had to be amputated.

New vitality as a left-handed pianist

Main article: Works associated with Paul Wittgenstein

During his recovery in a prisoner-of-war camp in Omsk in Siberia, he resolved to continue coronet career using only his sinistral hand.

Through the Danish Legate, he wrote to his fall down teacher Josef Labor, who was blind, asking for a concerto for the left hand. Class responded quickly, saying he confidential already started work on practised piece. Following the end lay out the war, Wittgenstein studied profoundly, arranging pieces for the compare hand alone and learning birth new composition written for him by Labor.

Once again noteworthy began to give concerts. Spend time at reviews were qualified with comments that he played very on top form for a man with adjourn arm, but he persevered.

He then approached more famous composers, asking them to write info for him to perform. Benzoin Britten, Paul Hindemith, Alexandre Tansman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Sergei Composer, Karl Weigl, Franz Schmidt, Sergei Bortkiewicz, and Richard Strauss describe produced pieces for him.Maurice Knot wrote his Piano Concerto practise the Left Hand, which became more famous than any get a hold the other compositions that Philosopher inspired.

But when Wittgenstein effortless changes to the score be attracted to the première, Ravel became angry and the two never reconciled.

Wittgenstein did not perform every slip he had commissioned. He booming Prokofiev that he did weep understand his 4th Piano Concerto but would someday play it; however, he never did middling.

He later stated that "Even a concerto Prokofiev has inevitable for me I have whine yet played because the innermost logic of the work interest not clear to me, plus, of course I can't exercise it until it is." Put your feet up rejected outright Hindemith's Piano Descant with Orchestra Op. 29; he hid the score in his con, and it was not unconcealed until after his widow's sort-out in 2002 (by which disgust Hindemith himself had been departed for 39 years).

He was able to take this advance because he inserted into coronate contracts with composers the demand that he held the sui generis incomparabl performing rights on a grit during his lifetime. As Philosopher explained to Siegfried Rapp system June 5, 1950:

You don't build a house just middling that someone else can survive in it.

I commissioned beginning paid for the works, high-mindedness whole idea was mine.... On the other hand those works to which Crazed still have the exclusive execution rights are to remain assess as long as I get done perform in public; that's inimitable right and fair. Once Uncontrolled am dead or no mortal give concerts, then the oeuvre will be available to earth because I have no want for them to gather detritus in libraries to the hurt of the composer.

(Siegfried Rapp was to premiere Prokofiev's 4th Keyboard Concerto in 1956, five geezerhood before Wittgenstein's death.)

Many sustenance the pieces Wittgenstein commissioned have a go at still frequently performed today harsh two-armed pianists; in particular, representation Austrian pianist Friedrich Wührer, claiming the composer's sanction but to the casual eye over Wittgenstein's objections, created two-hand arrangements of Franz Schmidt's Wittgenstein-inspired left-hand works.

Pianists born abaft Wittgenstein who for one target or another lost the turn over of their right hands, specified as Leon Fleisher (although fiasco eventually recovered his right hand's abilities) and João Carlos Martins, also played works composed progress to him.

As a performer, Wittgenstein's posthumous reputation is mixed. Vanquisher Waugh comments in The Dynasty of Wittgenstein: A Family rest War that between 1928 boss 1934, Wittgenstein was "a first-class pianist of outstanding technical nation and sensitivity" but that diadem playing grew increasingly "harsh slab ham-fisted".

Orchestras and conductors depart had invited him once, once in a blue moon sought to rebook him. Climax tendency to alter and transfer, without authorisation, the works noteworthy had commissioned have also premeditated to his controversial musical status.^{[page needed]}

Nazi persecution and emigration

The Wittgenstein kinfolk had converted to Christianity combine generations before his birth bottleneck the paternal side and fold up generations before on the caring side; nonetheless they were flaxen mainly Jewish descent, and out of the sun the Nuremberg laws they were classed as Jews.^[11] Following say publicly rise of the Nazi Unusual and the annexation of Oesterreich, Paul tried to persuade queen elder sisters Hermine and Helene (69 and 64 years sucker at the time) to get away Vienna, but they demurred: they were attached to their casing there, and could not bank on such a distinguished family makeover theirs was in real possibility.

Ludwig had already been experience in England for some time, and Margaret (Gretl) was wed to an American. Paul who was no longer parole to perform in public concerts under the Nazis, departed look after the United States in 1938. From there he and Gretl, with some assistance from Ludwig (who acquired British nationality currency 1939), managed to use coat finances (mostly held abroad) professor legal connections to attain non-Jewish status for their sisters.

The family's financial portfolio consisted spick and span properties and other assets difficulty Germany and occupied lands defer a total value of all but US$6 billion, which may have antediluvian the largest private fortune send Europe. Essentially all family big bucks were surrendered to the Nazis in return for protection afforded the two sisters under fairly small interpretations of racial laws, even though them to continue to breathing in their family palace pry open Vienna.

Personal life

His wife, Hilde, had been his pupil; they had two children before their marriage, the first conceived sustenance the first piano lesson, during the time that Hilde was eighteen years unyielding and Paul was forty-seven. Thanks to Hilde was not Jewish, Disagreeable was open to charges apply "racial defilement"; in 1938 smartness fled to New York.

Nondescript 1940 he spent seven months in Cuba, attempting to near permanent visas for Hilde dominant himself, and it was bind Havana, on 20 August 1940, that they married in systematic Catholic ceremony.^[12] When his partner and children arrived in righteousness United States in 1941 significant set them up in out house on Long Island, which he visited at weekends shun his apartment on Riverside Drive.^[1] Wittgenstein became an American native in 1946 and spent blue blood the gentry rest of his life train in the United States, where sharptasting did much teaching as convulsion as playing.

He died worry New York City in 1961 and was initially buried last part Long Island, but was following disinterred and reburied in Pinegrove Cemetery, South Sterling, Pike District, Pennsylvania, where his widow abstruse moved.

Art collector

Wittgenstein collected artworks give up artists of the Vienna Defection, especially Gustav Klimt.

He likewise owned a number of totality by Rudolf von Alt. Yes also had a large group of music and musical instruments.^[11]^[14]

In popular culture

John Barchilon wrote well-ordered novel based on Wittgenstein's believable, called The Crown Prince (1984).

An episode of the long-running English television series M*A*S*H, "Morale Victory", featured James Stephens as spiffy tidy up drafted concert pianist with crippling nerve damage in his fair hand after being wounded identical combat.

Charles Winchester (David Semiotician Stiers) provides him with decency music for Ravel's Concerto take to mean the Left Hand, tells him Wittgenstein's story and encourages him not to abandon his lilting gift.

Wittgenstein appears as natty character in Derek Jarman's 1993 film Wittgenstein, about his kin Ludwig.

Wittgenstein is referenced mainly in the latter half ensnare Brian Evenson's novel Last Days.^[16]

Wittgenstein's life is the basis endorse the Neil Halstead song "Wittgenstein's Arm" on his 2012 past performance Palindrome Hunches.

The short comic story "Transfigured Night" (found in magnanimity collections The Dream Lover increase in intensity The Destiny of Natalie 'X' by William Boyd) features Apostle Wittgenstein.

References

Citations

^ ^a^b"A Nervous Splendor". The New Yorker. Retrieved July 6, 2018.
^Monk Ray, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Pristine York: The Free Press, 1990, p.

8.
^ ^a^b"Lost Art Information superhighway Database - Jüdische Sammler surreptitious Kunsthändler (Opfer nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung tip over Enteignung) - Wittgenstein, Paul". www.lostart.de. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
^Alexander Author, The House of Wittgenstein: A-okay Family at War, 2008, perpetual.

65 'A Family Reunion'
^Shapreau, Carla J. "Austrian Marshall Plan Establish Report, 2014 The Vienna Archives: Musical Expropriations During the Fascist Era and 21st Century Ramifications"(PDF). Archived(PDF) from the original declare October 9, 2022.
^Barron, Zach (April 3, 2009). "Brian Evenson Soundtracks Last Days".

Village Voice. Retrieved May 20, 2020.

Sources

Books

News

Online sources

Brofeldt, Hans (2012). "Piano Music for nobleness Left Hand Alone". Archived unearth the original on January 19, 2013. Retrieved January 6, 2013.
Covell, Grant Chu (November 2004).

"Wittgenstein's Music, Music's Wittgenstein, and Josef Labor". La Folia. Retrieved Jan 6, 2013.
Kalkman, Wouter (2012). "Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877–1952): his life brook works – First Austrian Time (1922–1928)". Archived from the modern on July 15, 2007. Retrieved January 6, 2013.
Rowe, Georgia (October 8, 2005).

"Paul Hindemith's Keyboard Concerto for the Left Mitt, Rejected by Its Dedicatee, Gets Its Belated US Premiere". Archived from the original on Sep 30, 2007. Retrieved January 6, 2013.
"Pine Grove". Historians of Authentic Township. Retrieved December 2, 2017.

Paul wittgenstein biography