Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major

The pianist Paul Wittgenstein lost his right arm when serving on the Russian front in World War I. Undaunted, he set about training up his left hand, commissioning new concertos for it from numerous composers prominent in the 1920s, including Prokofiev, Britten, Hindemith, Korngold and Richard Strauss; Ravel’s 20-odd-minute work with large orchestra swiftly became the best-loved. Nevertheless Wittgenstein’s responses were often withering. Seeing Ravel’s two extended cadenzas, he grumbled: “If I wanted to play without the orchestra, I wouldn’t have commissioned a concerto!” The composer sensibly wouldn’t change a note. Wittgenstein gave the premiere of the work, unaltered, in Vienna on 5 January 1932. Ravel, who had never written a piano concerto before, worked on two simultaneously in 1930-31. The Concerto for Left Hand plumbs altogether darker and deeper territories than its G Major sibling. In one movement, divided into clear sections, it begins in the abyss with double-basses, cellos and contrabassoon, rising up in a huge crescendo before the piano enters with the first cadenza. After a meditatively expressive expanse, the music bursts abruptly into busy, jazzy and sardonic activity. Eventually that subsides to allow the piano free rein for a second cadenza, rippling back to the opening ideas and carrying them into new, visionary settings—and a brusque coda plummets everything back to earth.