The album Left Hand Legacy Volume 2 is the latest part of the Wittgenstein Project, which aims to bring the treasures of Wittgenstein's library to the concert stage. For far too long Paul Wittgenstein's library was inaccessible to the world. Not before 2001 a pile of chamber music surfaced, specially composed for the pianist who commissioned Maurice Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand. These chamber music works have hardly ever been played since Wittgenstein premiered them in the 1920s and 30s.
The Dutch pianist Folke Nauta had to continue his career as a one- handed pianist, after focal dystonia affected his right hand. Paul Wittgenstein was his model and this trove of chamber music was his salvation. There was just one complicating factor: Wittgenstein's library had become dispersed throughout the world. Nauta tracked down the original manuscripts in Austrian and English archives, still containing Wittgenstein's furiously scribbled annotations. The quintet formation of piano, clarinet and string trio is a consistent feature of Wittgenstein's chamber music legacy. So Nauta approached the clarinetist Lars Wouters van den Oudenweijer and Prisma String Trio. Together these five top-of-the-bill chamber musicians from the Netherlands joined forces and launched the Wittgenstein Project, with the aim of bringing the music back to life and telling Wittgenstein's extraordinary tale of misery, struggle and artistic triumph.
The album Left Hand Legacy Vol.1 (COBRA Records February, 2023) showcases the diverse vocabulary of Wittgenstein's circle of composer friends Franz Schmidt, Josef Labor, Hans Gal and Ernest Walker. This album Left Hand Legacy Vol.2 plumbs the emotional depths, with Franz Schmidt's brooding Quintet in B flat major and the sublime combination of clarinet, viola and piano left hand in Josef Labor's Trio in G minor.
Tragically and unexpectedly, the second album is destined to be the last one to feature Folke Nauta, who passed away suddenly in de summer of 2023. This personal tragedy signifies a great loss for the music world. This album features the very last recordings Folke Nauta ever made.
