Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.
The leftist Britten
Coming of age in the first half of the 20th century were two exceptionally talented children of the wealthy Austrian steel magnate Karl Wittgenstein: Ludwig Wittgenstein became a famous philosopher and Paul Wittgenstein a concert pianist. Paul served in the Austrian army in World War I, and, for a concert pianist, suffered a horrific injury: the loss of his right arm. Undaunted, he rebuilt his career by commissioning and performing works for piano left-hand. The family fortune enabled him to commission the leading composers of his day, including Richard Strauss, Maurice Ravel, and Sergei Prokofiev. Unfortunately, even the Wittgenstein fortune couldn’t protect the family from the racial laws of Nazi Germany, given the family’s Jewish heritage, and, in 1938, Paul Wittgenstein left for the United States after Austria’s “Anschluss” with the German Reich. In America, Paul Wittgenstein commissioned a concert work from a young British expatriate named Benjamin Britten, also living in America at the time, and gave the premiere performance of Britten’s “Diversions” for piano left-hand and orchestra on today’s date in 1942, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. Wittgenstein later confessed that of all his commissions, Britten’s work came the closest to fulfilling his needs and wishes.