This started out as a review of a cd:
Erich Korngold/Franz Schmidt
Music for Strings and Piano Left Hand (Sony Classical)
Leon Fleisher, piano; Joseph Silverstein and Joel Smirnoff, violins; Michael Tree, viola; Yo-Yo Ma, cello.
These two works owe their existence to the pianist Paul Wittgenstein (Ludwig, the philosopher, was his brother). He trained for a musical career, but it was interrupted by World War I. During the war, Paul Wittgenstein suffered wounds which required his right arm to be amputated. Undeterred by this, he continued to pursue a musical career and commissioned a great many works for piano left-hand, including concertos and chamber works. Two of those chamber works are featured on this CD:
1. Erich Wolfgang Korngold: "Suite for Two Violins, Cello, and Piano Left Hand" (1930)
2. Franz Schmidt: "Quintet for Two Violins, Viola, Cello, and Piano Left Hand" (1926)
Both are late-romantic, rich-sounding works, featuring an all-star set of performers. It took five and seven years for these recordings to make it to CD, but the wait was worth it. Leon Fleisher has concentrated his pianistic efforts for the past twenty-five to thirty years on the left-hand repertoire, because of injuries to his right hand in the 1960s. Recently, however, he has made sporadic returns to two-handed piano playing. This set features him and his equally celebrated string colleagues in splendid form.
(Sony Music Entertainment; 550 Madison Ave.; NYC 10022)
George Yeh