Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Can a one-handed pianist make a career as a concert pianist?

A one-handed pianist has just graduated from the Royal College of Music in London - the first ever to do so. Nicholas McCarthy, 21, was turned down repeatedly by music colleges, which didn't even offer him an audition, purely on account of his (congenital) one handedness, but he persisted. Amazingly, he only started learning piano at 14, on a cheap keyboard, after hearing someone play a Beethoven Sonata. So there's hope for all those late starters out there .

But the question is, is it feasible for him to have a concert career? Paul Wittgenstein famously had one, of sorts, after losing his right arm, and commissioned several composers to write him concertante works, but only Ravel's D major Concerto is performed with any regularity (by two handed pianists). How many of us have ever heard Prokofiev's 4th Concerto, or the LH works of Korngold, Hindemith, Britten, R. Strauss, Franz Schmidt, Bortkiewicz etc in concert? There are some LH works for solo piano, of which Scriabin's Op.9 is probably the best known - he wrote the Prelude & Nocturne for himself after injuring his RH; Saint-Saëns wrote his Op.135 Etudes for a similarly injured friend, Montigny-Rémaury; and there's also Bach-Brahms's Chaconne, Chopin/Godowsky, Bartok, Reinecke... but not much else.

In the past, two-handed pianists like Michel Béroff and Leon Fleisher have continued to perform LH works for short periods after injuring their RH, but I don't know of any L handed pianists on the concert circuit.

Incidentally, I believe McCarthy will be playing a part in the coming ParaOlympics.

It might seem unseemly to put it this way, but I think his being one-handed is a factor that could greatly enhance the public's interest in him. This wouldn't help him in any long run if his playing isn't top-notch, but if it is, it would.

So I say, sure he could.

Interesting question. The market will decide this one. I suspect the evidence does not augur well.

But a person with a music degree can have a very satisfying career in music without spending a large fraction of it on the concert stage.

He was interviewed on TV (and also played the Scriabin Nocturne) after his graduation, and he seemed adamant that he wanted to be a concert pianist, rather than any other career to do with classical music; and he's giving a recital in London in a few weeks' time. He's on YouTube, so see what you think of his playing.

Graffman and Fleisher played only left hand works for quite a while but had big careers before being injured. The likelihood of a random conservatory graduate with one hand having a major career performing the very limited repertoire is extremely small. Wittgenstein's fame lies, I think, mostly because he commissioned and composed left hand works and not because he had a big career.

The young man's determination is admirable. But he is up against problems that are obvious. There is a limited repertoire available, and if he cannot fill halls he will have at best a niche appeal that doesn't pay well. This is not a counsel of despair, but it is a suggestion that anyone in his position would be well advised to think strategically about the music market. If there is a limited repertoire for one-handed music, and the likelihood that there are huge audiences for that limited classical repertoire is very small, then a reasonable person would think about how to create new ways of using his pianistic abilities to create a stage presence that sells.

'The rest of the story'...familiar Paul Harvey words was about a student that came to Liszt when he [ the student] was 25 years old...after about 5 years of study he toured world-wide donating his proceeds to charity. He came from royalty and had lost an arm in a hunting accident. His first name was Geza? not sure of the last name.

rada

Geza Zichy.

Why is that story not particularly relevant for McCarthy? Well, for starters, Zichy was swimming in a different musical ocean, one in which there was a substantial demand for the kind of music that he knew and could play. Like the other one-handed pianists that have been mentioned, they worked in a world in which audiences for this kind of music were expanding, not contracting.

This is why I suggested that McCarthy should approach the contemporary music scene strategically. Relying on the repertoire written by and for people like Zichy and Wittgenstein is not necessarily a winning hand today (pun intended).

Another reason is that Zichy did not need to earn his living through his work. He was a man of independent means.

I guess it depends what he choses to do as a concert pianist.
If he himself commission new pieces, why not ?
He could also be doing transcriptions.

Géza Zichy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9za_Zichy

Edit: P-Dad beat me by 3 minutes.

Do you have any idea what commissioning a new work costs? I do. I have inquired about having short works created for local music groups. A composer with any name can ask five figures for a very short piece of music. Again, I don't say this as a dismissal of the idea that this fellow could become a concert artist. But people do have to think seriously about the economics of their decisions.

He could do his own arrangements of any number of works. I don't think lack of repertoire dooms him.

So, in addition to having Liszt-like pianistic abilities, he would need Liszt-like compositional talent.

More seriously, I know what you're saying. But really, it's a tall order to think that this young graduate could go out and arrange Mozart symphonies for one a handed pianist and really get an audience. I could be wrong. Perhaps his novelty value would never wear off! As we know, there is a limited demand on the concert stage for excellent TWO-handed pianists playing the vast concert repertoire that exists. The bulk of that repertoire would be uninteresting to an audience as transcriptions for one hand.

I suppose he could work on transcribing the top (and pop) fifty classical muzak pieces.

Funny -- after making the joke and seeming to quit joking, you did another one.

Mozart symphonies??


THERE YOU GO.

That's closer to what he'd need to do.

I mean look: There are terrific transcriptions of piano works for GUITAR! (My favorite example below -- Chopin's F# minor Polonaise! And I have a CD set of Chopin's mazurkas on guitar.) Provided he has the great talent he needs anyway, he can do it for piano-left-hand. And if he doesn't, as I said, he wouldn't have any long-run chance anyway.

Cyrill smith carried on his career after the loss of use of one arm/hand.

He performed on the concert stage with his partner phylis sellick ( also a concert pianist in her own right)

They did duets for three hands,and some music was written for them.

The scores where often rearranged by themselves to suit three hands instead of four, so there are options for a one handed pianist .

Cyrill smith wrote a book that is readily available called ( obviously) "duet for three hands"

A remarkably inspiring read in its self for all lovers of music, and it demonstrates the human ability to surmount seemingly insurmountable loss.

A read that will have you cursing yourself everytime you moan or think you cannot do/achieve something.

Yes, but :

“This acoustic guitar(s) arrangement of Chopin’s original composition for piano was created by Ed Chang. This newly -rendered adaptation is a manipulated “SynthFont” derivation from a conventional “classical” transcription (in MIDI) By Malcolm Dale.”

I doubt that any classical guitarist could play this "creation" as it's played in this video.

Regards,

No but actually the classical guitarist Kazuhito Yamashita transcribed Mussorgsky's Picture at an exhibition, Stravinsky's Firebird suite and Dvorak's Symphony 9 for guitar
There's a bad quality footage of him playing it live on YT (there's also a good version of Caballero and Marko Topchii). Caballero transcribed Berg's Sonata op1 as well as many keyboard works from Bach, Chromatic fantasy and Fugue included (and he also plays the impossible transcriptions by Yamashita).
There are many others.

Anyway, it was just intended as a reply to the previous posts. But it also shows how far transcribing can go (there's also this transcription of Liszt's Sonata for solo violin).

There are tons of transcriptions and original pieces already written for LH alone. I think the problem is that there aren't enough great pieces to make a performing career out of them. Perhaps a handful of concerti and a few recital's worth of solo works. There are limitations to what the LH can play that make it harder to write great music for LH alone.

My goodness -- my bad!!!
Sorry! And thanks very much for the correction!

As the great Emily Litella (Gilda Radner) used to say:

"That's entirely different.
Never mind!"

I don't know if he can make a career as a concert pianist, but he is impressive...