Safely Grazing Again

I noticed that the fingers on your right hand still curl in a little bit. Yes, but they're not clenched. So for 35 years, your right hand was useless. Can you talk a little about what you did with your left hand?

There is a certain [piano] literature for the left-hand. It's not because of somebody who had dystonia. There was an Austrian pianist who lived in the time of World War I who was [a] brother [of] the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Paul Wittgenstein was a soldier in the war, and got his right arm shot off. He was another obsessive-compulsive, so he used part of his fortune to commission works from the great composers of the day to write music for him: concertos for left hand and orchestra. And I'm playing one of them in May with the Philharmonic over [at] Lincoln Center. It's the Ravel [Piano Concerto in D], which is an absolute masterpiece. It's unbelievable, for one hand or two hands or 10 hands; it's just a great piece of music.

You play it with one hand? What is your right hand doing?

Oh, scratching my nose. I figure I should learn to juggle grapefruits with my right hand. [Laughs] Actually, what I've done is play and conduct at the same time.

Aside from Ravel, what are you playing on your tour?

Lukas Foss, who is an important American composer today, wrote me a concerto. There's going to be a week of concerts [at the Peabody] that's ending up with me playing the Foss Concerto for the Left Hand, which was commissioned for me by the Boston Symphony. In other words, through my condition I've been able to add to the literature, which is really kind of cool. So I'll be playing the Foss and the Ravel, then I go to Europe to teach and to play. Then I come back and I do Brahms in Baltimore, my hometown.