Leon Fleisher: Sublime pianist with one hand or two

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Leon Fleisher, a brilliant pianist, was in his thirties when fingers in his right hand suddenly stopped working – a fateful twist that cut short his playing career – and for three decades was one of the great enigmas of the classical music world. New York Times music critic Noel Straus, marvelling at the pianist’s delicate power and the seeming ease of his mastery of an onerous Brahms concerto, called him “one of the most remarkably gifted of the younger generation of American keyboard artists”. “I was too chicken to buy a Harley,” he later quipped to a reporter, “so I bought a Vespa.” As he struggled to find direction, Fleisher threw himself into teaching and conducting as well as learning the repertory for left-hand piano – most famously Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand, as well as other works written for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, whose right arm was amputated after a combat injury in the First World War. Beethoven’s vision of music as a force capable of reconciling us to each other and to the world may today seem remote, but that renders it an ever more crucial ideal for which to strive.” Leon Fleisher, pianist, born 23 July 1928, died 2 August 2020 © The Washington Post