The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War

by Alexander Waugh

  The successes of Paul's commissions had inspired many young composers to send him unsolicited proposals, suggestions or even complete scores of works they had written for the left hand. They also encouraged figures of higher distinction to join the Wittgenstein carnival. In June 1924, Leopold Godowsky signed a contract for $6,000 (half on signature, half on delivery) for a left-handed piano concerto, but panicked--because he had no experience of orchestration--and in the end offered a masterful caprice on themes from Johann Strauss's Gypsy Baron for $3,000. Godowsky wrote to his wife, "It is good music--very likely too good for Wittgenstein." Paul performed it only once.

  In his contracts with Korngold, Schmidt, Strauss and Bortkiewicz, Paul had insisted that the contractual details be kept secret. The musical world may have guessed that large sums were involved, but even those young composers who knew nothing of it were excited at the prospect of association with Paul Wittgenstein. Some of their works he performed. In February 1925 he premiered a paraphrase of "Tales from the Vienna Woods" for piano and orchestra by Eduard Schutt in the Musikverein-saal; a Serenata and Perpetuo Mobile by the blind composer Rudolf Braun led to a commission for a full-scale concerto; a quartet by Hans Gal, which Paul described as "nothing remarkable," was premiered in March 1928 and a concerto by Karl Weigl was rejected. But these were not then or now important composers and Paul always had his eye on higher prospects.

  On February 24, 1929, he was booked to perform the Panathenaenzug in Paris and instructed his agent, Georg Kugel, to write to Maurice Ravel--a composer at the height of his fame--and ask if he would like to attend the concert, with a view to considering writing his own concerto for Paul. Ravel, already at work on another piano concerto, expressed regret that he was unable to come but asked if Paul would like to visit him at his small, ornate villa, Le Belvedere, at Montfort-l'Amaury, twenty-five miles west of Paris. The meeting seems to have gone well. Ravel agreed to study some left-hand piano compositions, including the Saint-Saens and Chopin-Godowsky studies. The prospect excited him. "Je me joue de difficultes," he said and agreed that on his forthcoming trip to Vienna in March he would come to hear Paul in concert playing the Panathenaenzug.

  In the summer of 1930 Paul toured the Soviet Union. His trip took him to concert halls in Moscow, Leningrad, Baku, Kiev and Kharkov (the birthplace of Sergei Bortkiewicz), where he played the Bortkiewicz Concerto to a clamor of ecstatic applause. In Kiev public enthusiasm was so great that he had to repeat his program two days later. Although he spoke a little Russian, Paul detested the Russian people and their culture and had done so ever since the tough days of his wartime imprisonment. When asked by a polite gentleman in New York in the 1950s if he would like to come and see his splendid collection of Russian antiquities in his newly created Russian Room, Paul answered sharply: "No, I hate everything Russian."

  Above all he despised the new communist regime, the ubiquitous propaganda that was used to sustain it and the destitution that it created among its people. "When dark envy dresses up like equality war against privilege becomes the battle cry," he would say, quoting from his favorite Viennese poet, Franz Grillparzer. "I was driven to desperation by the eternal Russian waiting and cursed vehemently," he remembered. In Kharkov he was forced to carry a chair from his hotel bedroom down to the breakfast hall, where there were not enough places to sit. The meal took nearly two hours because nothing ever arrived and ordering was a nightmare:

  "Cafe au lait." There is no milk. "Then tea with lemon!" There are no lemons. "An egg dish with two eggs!" There are no eggs. "Then bread and butter!" There is no butter, only cheese. A government official who was there told me that he could no longer remember what butter tasted like. And that was in the capital city of an agrarian country like the Ukraine!

  In Russia as elsewhere Paul was outspoken in his contempt for the communist regime. In Moscow he rebuked an agent at his concert saying: "If you had kept the Tsar your country would be infinitely better than it is now!" The agent left the room tapping his forehead with his finger. Even as a foreign guest such remarks were risky in the Stalinist Russia of the 1930s, but Paul was having none of it, as he made clear in a written report on his trip to Leningrad:

  The Great Hall, as is generally the case in all public buildings, theatres, concert halls and banks, is draped with red banners. Many of them hang the entire length of the hall, and on them is written: "We shall Conquer and Surpass the Capitalist Countries!" I thought, if instead of these talks, this waste of banner cloth, instead of the countless busts and pictures of Lenin, if instead of these huge and superficial expenditures of money, if instead of all this, only one clean public lavatory were built, then much more would have been achieved for the good and convenience of the people as well as for the "conquering and surpassing" of the capitalist countries.

  Just as Paul was leaving for Russia his spritely mustachioed agent, Georg Kugel, had informed him of the good news that Sergei Prokofiev, the famous Russian pianist and composer, now resident in France, was agreeable, in principle, to composing a concerto for him. Kugel, who was paid a retainer by Paul, had approached Prokofiev's agent Michel Astroff at the beginning of June, but had not informed Paul of his intention to help himself to a slice of the fee. While Paul was away, Kugel wrote slyly to Astroff:

  Mr. Wittgenstein is presently on tour in Russia and will be returning to Vienna at the beginning of July. I shall discuss the whole matter with him then and let you know. In the meantime, I would ask you to say roughly how long Mr. Prokofiev thinks he would need to finish a concerto for the left hand and orchestra.

  Mr. Wittgenstein would have to have exclusive performance rights for 5 years. The nature of the composition--whether one movement or three, whether a set of variations--is, of course, entirely up to Herr Prokofiev. I hope to be able to get agreement to the requested fee of 5,000 dollars and would expect my usual 10% agency commission.

  I look forward to your favourable reply and sign myself,

  Georg Kugel

  Returning to Vienna, Paul refused to tell his inquisitive family anything about his Russian trip and at a dinner to welcome him back he instructed his aged Aunt Clara to change the subject immediately if his trip, his concerts or his music were mentioned in the conversation. From Vienna he traveled to London and thence to the Overstrand Hotel near Cromer in Norfolk for a seaside holiday with Marga. It was here that news reached him of Prokofiev's final agreement to terms. "Dear Master [he wrote to the composer in Paris], allow me to express my immense joy at the news that I shall one day be playing the concerto that you have agreed to compose for me." On August 29, filled with eagerness and excitement, he flew to Paris to meet Prokofiev for the first time and to hear how Ravel was getting along with his concerto.

  At Montfort-l'Amaury Ravel ushered him into his piano room filled with kitsch, neatly arranged ornaments and bibelots--pens made of duck feathers, crystal Gothic candlesticks, seashells and a mechanical bird in a gilded cage that he called Zizi. There the composer struggled to render the orchestral part and the solo line simultaneously with two hands on his piano. Paul was distinctly underwhelmed by the music and told the composer so. One of his complaints concerned the long unaccompanied cadenza with which it begins. "If I had wanted to play without the orchestra I would not have commissioned a concerto!" he said. "I suppose Ravel was disappointed and I was sorry, but I had never learned to pretend." Paul required several changes to be made and when he left Ravel's house was still uncertain whether the composer would be prepared to make them or not. At Rue Valentin Hauy in Paris on September 2, Prokofiev was curious to learn how things were going with Ravel but Paul remained silent. It was not until the end of the month, by which time Ravel had assured him that the changes would be made, that he was able to explain to Prokofiev: "Ravel's Concerto will probably be finished in a few weeks. When I saw you at your house the thing was still uncertain. I am writing to you now, in case you thought I was trying to hide anything."

  The deal, which was eventually settled between
Paul and Ravel, earned the composer $6,000 and gave the pianist exclusive performing rights in the Concerto pour la main gauche for five years from the date of signature. But there were problems. The French premiere was scheduled to take place at the Salle Pleyel in Paris with Ravel himself conducting in April 1932, while the world premiere public performance was to take place in Vienna at the Grosser Musikvereinsaal with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Robert Heger in January of that year. As usual the real first performance (on November 27, 1931) took place at a private concert in the Wittgenstein Palais in Vienna with the orchestral part played on a second piano. Within a few months of the announcement that the concerto was ready Paul was booked to play it at concert halls in Berlin, London, Warsaw, Athens, Brno, Lemberg and Poznan.

  Ravel was not in the audience at the Vienna premiere on January 5, at which, according to the critic of the Neue Freie Presse: "Paul Wittgenstein's virtuoso performance unleashed a storm of applause." Instead he came by train to Vienna from Paris on the 30th accompanied by the pianist Marguerite Long, with whom he was touring his recently completed Piano Concerto in G. They stayed at the French Embassy. In the evening Paul hosted a dinner in Ravel's and Ms. Long's honor. Among those present were Franz Schmidt, the French Ambassador Bertrand Clauzel and various Viennese dignitaries. Paul's intention was to play Ravel's concerto after dinner with his friend the pianist and composer Walter Bricht taking the orchestral part on a second piano. During dinner Paul told Ms. Long that he had made certain alterations to the work, which made her anxious on the composer's behalf, so she advised him to forewarn Ravel before playing it to him. This he did not do. During the performance Ravel's face clouded in fury as he listened to Paul's demolition of his masterpiece. He heard lines taken from the orchestral part and added to the solo, harmonies changed, parts added, bars cut and at the end a newly created series of great swirling arpeggios in the final cadenza. The composer was beside himself with indignation and disbelief. The spirit of his work, he believed, was ruined and his rights had been infringed. Marguerite Long recalled the scene:

  As soon as the performance was over, I attempted to create a diversion with Ambassador Clauzel, in order to avoid an incident. Alas Ravel walked slowly over towards Wittgenstein and said to him: "But that is not it at all!" Wittgenstein defended himself: "I am an old hand as a pianist and what you composed does not sound right." That was exactly the wrong thing to say. "I am an old hand at orchestration and it does sound right!" was Ravel's reply. Imagine the embarrassment! I remember that Ravel was in such a state of nervous tension that he sent the embassy car away and we returned on foot, hoping a walk in the bitter cold would calm his nerves.

  On the walk back Ms. Long tried to put Paul's case as she had sensed that despite everything he adored the music, but Ravel would hear nothing of it and became rigidly opposed to Paul's playing the work in Paris. Rumors circulated in the press that Paul had demanded changes to the concerto because it was too difficult for him to play. The rift between composer and pianist continued to simmer throughout February. Paul wrote to Ravel in Paris protesting that all performers must be accorded a certain lassitude. "Performers must not be slaves!" he said, to which Ravel responded, "Performers are slaves." As the composer's mind steadily deteriorated toward the end of his life, this last remark became his mantra-like, knee-jerk response to any mention of the name Paul Wittgenstein.

  On March 7, Ravel fired off another angry letter demanding Paul's formal commitment to play the work in future only as written. Paul was in an agitated state, as can always be divined from his handwriting which, at times of stress, came out as a wild, barely legible scrawl. He wrote to the composer Karl Weigl to say that he was thinking of giving up performing in public, and he explained to Marga: "I have cancelled the Paris concert for several reasons too long to be related in one of my sort of letters." His reply to Ravel in a letter of March 17, 1932, gives more detail:

  As for a formal commitment to play your work henceforth strictly as written, that is completely out of the question. No self-respecting artist could accept such a condition. All pianists make modifications, large or small, in each concerto they play. Such a formal commitment would be intolerable: I could be held accountable for every imprecise 16th note and every quarter rest which I omitted or added... You write indignantly and ironically that I want to be "put in the spotlight." But of course, cher Maitre, you have explained it perfectly: that is precisely the reason I asked you to write a concerto! Indeed I wish to be put myself in the spotlight. What other objective could I have had? I therefore have the right to request the necessary modifications for this objective to be attained ... As I previously wrote, I am only insisting on some of the modifications that I proposed, not all of them: I have in no way changed the essence of your work. I have only changed the instrumentation. In the meantime, I have refused to play in Paris, as I cannot accept impossible conditions.

  The argument now focused on a two-page section in the middle of the concerto that Paul insisted would be better played by the piano and not, as Ravel had composed it, by the orchestra. "It ruins the concerto," Ravel said. After a long standoff Paul eventually capitulated, admitting in the end that Ravel was right. In the months that he had been studying the work his attitude toward it had changed. He was now "fascinated" by the piece, calling it "a great work ... It is astonishing. Although averse to any so-called modern music it is just the 6/8 part, the most dissonant of the whole, which I like best!"

  A new Paris premiere was agreed for January 17, 1933, at the Salle Pleyel with the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris, which Ravel himself would conduct. Despite lingering frictions between composer and pianist, the concert itself was a monumental success and the official press line was that the two men had mended their bridges. "My quarrel with Ravel has long been settled," Paul told a reporter from the New York Times in November 1934. "He and I are on the best of terms." But the whole episode left a bitter taste in both their mouths. Ravel pulled out of a second concert in Monte Carlo in April on grounds of ill health and remained dissatisfied with Paul's alterations to his score. That summer, as the composer was staying with friends at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, he had to be rescued from a swimming pool after finding himself unable to move his arms. These were the first symptoms of a rare dementia known as Pick's disease. His gradual, debilitating decline affected all aspects of his physical and mental coordination. By the end he was unable even to write his name. He died on December 28, 1937, after a failed brain operation at a hospital in Paris.

  PROKOFIE

  Paul was very excited about his first encounter with Prokofiev. It took place in the lobby of the Hotel Majestic in Paris and Prokofiev suggested that they lunch at a restaurant with his agent Michel Astroff and afterward repair to his house on the Rue Valentin Hauy, where he had staying the celebrated theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold and his wife, the actress Zinaida Raikh. Paul must have known a bit about Meyerhold already--that he was an official of the theater division of the Soviet Union's Commissariat of Education and Enlightenment and a card-carrying member of the Communist Party--for when Prokofiev invited him home Paul hesitated for a while before exclaiming, "I cannot stand Bolsheviks!" Prokofiev assured him that Meyerhold was an outstanding artist and that he was only a Communist Party member in order that he might continue his work in the Soviet Union undisturbed by the authorities. So Paul agreed to come.

  Prokofiev's agent later told the composer that he had been "disappointed by the unattractive look of Wittgenstein," and openly astounded that anyone should pay as much as $5,000 for a concerto. Prokofiev, on the other hand, was impressed by Paul's ability to eat his lunch with only one hand and defended him afterward saying: "So what did you expect-that he would be wearing a frock-coat with medals?" In the evening at Prokofiev's house, he and Paul sat by the piano. Paul demonstrated his technique with pieces by Chopin, Mozart and Puccini after which Prokofiev asked him: "What makes you commission a concerto from me when this is the sort of music you like?" Paul answered th
at he liked the way Prokofiev wrote for the piano and was hoping for a technically interesting piece, so the composer sat at the keyboard and played him two themes that he was thinking of incorporating into the concerto. He specifically asked Paul to listen to them several times before offering an opinion, but after the first hearing Paul burst out: "You could carry on playing that for two months and I still would not understand it."

  TOP: Portraits of Karl Wittgenstein's paternal grandparents: Moses Meyer Wittgenstein (Hermann Christian's putative father), and his wife, Breindel (sometimes Bernadine) Wittgenstein (nee Simon), c. 1802.

  BOTTOM LEFT: Karl in his early twenties, c. 1868.

  BOTTOM RIGHT: Karl's father, Hermann Christian Wittgenstein, as a young man, c. 1834.

  TOP: Wittgenstein siblings, c. 1890. From left: Helene, Rudi, Hermine, Ludwig, Gretl, Paul, Hans and Kurt.

  RIGHT: Karl and Leopoldine at the time of their silver wedding in 1899.

  The Silver Wedding Party at Neuwaldegg, summer 1899. In sailor suits: Paul (far right) and Ludwig (holding the arm of his aunt Clara). Hermine has a girl on her lap, behind whose straw hat stands Helene. Gretl stands directly behind Ludwig. Among the standing men in white ties can be seen Hans (far right with a cigarette), Kurt (at the top of the picture with a prominent scar on his left cheek) and Rudi (fourth from left, his face between the shoulders of two cousins).

  The Musikaal, where Brahms, Strauss and Mahler gathered for the family's musical soirees.