Playing the piano without hands is quite difficult. With one hand it is already almost impossible, although Paul Wittgenstein came a long way. The pianist - and elder brother of the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein - lost his right arm in the First World War trenches. He set about training his left arm with some dogged determination and, thanks to the family fortune, was able to get some famous composers to write piano works especially for the left hand. He had moderate success with it, though those works are still played today.
In The Terrible Wittgenstein, a lunchtime theatre performance at Amsterdam's Theater Bellevue, we see Paul Wittgenstein back in 1951, when he is working as a piano teacher for wealthy New Yorkers. Director and writer Roeland Hofman uses this situation as a starting point for a bizarre hour of theatre in which blood flows. Actor Martijn Nieuwerf plays the troubled one-armed piano teacher in his familiar, disarming style. Alongside him, we see Isabelle Houdtzagers Billy de Walle as two over-the-top early adolescents and Tobias Nierop as the butler who is not named after the world-famous economist Stiglitz, although that could just be the case. The play, by the way, is extremely funny.
I went to watch an inset performance, and asked director Hofman and title actor Nieuwerf about the background.
The show will premiere this Sunday and can then be seen through 26 at Theatre Bellevue, Amsterdam, always at half past 12 in the afternoon. Inserts: http://theaterbellevue.nl/wittgenstein.
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