With Left

Ravel's Piano Concerto was written for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in the First World War. The paradoxical sonic power with which the soloist performs in this virtuoso concerto is all the more remarkable – with exaggeration, parody, and the constant impression of two hands on the keyboard. Almost ten years earlier, La Valse portrayed the glorious collapse of society dancing to its doom. Pēteris Vasks depicts the opposite...