Concerto for the Left Hand for Piano and Orchestra

In 1929, Paul Wittgenstein, a pianist and war veteran who lost his right arm in the Great War, commissioned Maurice Ravel to write a concerto for him to perform. The result was one of Ravel’s most thrilling compositions and, for Wittgenstein, the most important of the many works he commissioned over the course of his career. This scholarly-critical edition of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand is based on previously inaccessible and unknown sources. The editor, Douglas Woodfull-Harris, was able to consult manuscripts in the private library of the Paul Wittgenstein Estate, which allowed him to retrace the work’s evolution from Ravel’s autograph working copy to the first printed edition. A source of key importance to our new edition is a handwritten French copy of Ravel’s own piano reduction (the autograph is inaccessible) that he gave to Wittgenstein to facilitate rehearsing the work. This copy is the sole source reflecting Wittgenstein’s own interpretation and containing his changes to the final cadenza. It also helps us to understand omissions in the first edition of the score as well as the piano reduction, and enabled the editor, amongst other things, to correct a great many notes which could be found in previous editions, including the solo piano part.