Editing Paul Wittgenstein (section)

==New career as a left-handed pianist==
{{Main|Works associated with Paul Wittgenstein}}
During his recovery in a prisoner-of-war camp in [[Omsk]] in Siberia, Wittgenstein resolved to continue his career using only his left hand. Through the Danish Ambassador, he wrote to his old teacher [[Josef Labor]], who was blind, asking for a concerto for the left hand. Labor responded quickly, saying he had already started work on a piece.{{Sfn|Brofeldt|2012|p=}} After the war, Wittgenstein studied intensely, arranging pieces for the left hand alone and learning Labor's new composition. He began to perform again. Many reviews were qualified with comments that he played very well for a man with one arm, but he persevered.

He then approached more famous composers, asking them to write material for him to perform. [[Benjamin Britten]], [[Paul Hindemith]], [[Alexandre Tansman]], [[Erich Wolfgang Korngold]], [[Sergei Prokofiev]], [[Karl Weigl]], [[Franz Schmidt (composer)|Franz Schmidt]], [[Sergei Bortkiewicz]], and [[Richard Strauss]] all produced pieces for him.{{Sfn|Edel|1994|p=}} [[Maurice Ravel]] wrote his [[Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (Ravel)|Piano Concerto for the Left Hand]], which became more famous than any of the other compositions Wittgenstein inspired. But when Wittgenstein made changes to the score for the première, Ravel was incensed, and the two never reconciled.{{Sfn|Ilić|2011|p=}}

Wittgenstein did not perform every piece he commissioned. He told Prokofiev that he did not understand his [[Piano Concerto No. 4 (Prokofiev)|4th Piano Concerto]] but would someday play it; he never did.{{Sfn|Brofeldt|2012|p=}} He later said, "Even a concerto Prokofiev has written for me I have not yet played because the inner logic of the work is not clear to me, and, of course I can't play it until it is."{{Sfn|Reich|2002|p=}} He rejected outright Hindemith's ''Piano Music with Orchestra'' Op.&nbsp;29; he hid the score in his study, and it was not discovered until after his widow's death in 2002 (by which time Hindemith had been dead for 39 years).{{Sfn|Rowe|2005|p=}} He could take this approach because he inserted into his contracts with composers the stipulation that he held the unique performing rights on a composition during his lifetime. As he told [[Siegfried Rapp]] on June 5, 1950:

{{blockquote|You don't build a house just so that someone else can live in it. I commissioned and paid for the works, the whole idea was mine.... But those works to which I still have the exclusive performance rights are to remain mine as long as I still perform in public; that's only right and fair. Once I am dead or no longer give concerts, then the works will be available to everyone because I have no wish for them to gather dust in libraries to the detriment of the composer.{{Sfn|Kalkman|2012|p=}}}}

(Rapp premiered Prokofiev's 4th Piano Concerto in 1956, five years before Wittgenstein's death.)

Many of the pieces Wittgenstein commissioned are still performed today by two-armed pianists; in particular, the Austrian pianist [[Friedrich Wührer]], claiming the composer's sanction but apparently over Wittgenstein's objections, created two-hand arrangements of Schmidt's Wittgenstein-inspired left-hand works. Pianists born after Wittgenstein who lost the use of their right hands, such as [[Leon Fleisher]] (although he eventually recovered his right hand's abilities) and [[João Carlos Martins]], also played works composed for him.

Wittgenstein's posthumous reputation is mixed. In ''The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War'', Alexander Waugh writes that between 1928 and 1934, Wittgenstein was "a world-class pianist of outstanding technical ability and sensitivity" but that his playing grew increasingly "harsh and ham-fisted". Orchestras and conductors that had invited him once seldom sought to rebook him. His tendency to alter and rewrite, without authorization, the works he commissioned has also contributed to his controversial status.{{sfn|Waugh|2008}}{{page needed|date=January 2022}}