DJ plays the piano with one hand. There's a catalogue of music for one-handed pianists like him

Australia Broadcast Center

12-05-2025

During his early twenties, DJ was working towards his dream of becoming a concert pianist.
Things were looking promising, and he was even doing postgraduate studies in Russia, one of the highly regarded locations in the world to train.
Then he had a sudden stroke. DJ lost the use of the right side of his body and could no longer play piano.
Not only was his dream crushed. It changed his way of relating to the world.
"Piano music is important in my life because you don't have to say anything, you express your emotions through your playing," he shares in the new ABC iview series The Piano.
It also impacted his mental health.
"Being not able to play was very depressing and very boring."
But as his journey progressed, DJ had a realisation:
What DJ discovered is that there is a rich history of piano music written exclusively for the left hand, thanks to the work of wounded returned servicemen from the First and Second World Wars.
He credits these veterans for inspiring him to play the piano again.
In 1914, Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein was shot in the elbow and his right arm amputated.
Wittgenstein was born into a musical family. In his youth, visitors to the family home included famous composers like Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss.
The pianist persevered with music after the war, refining his left-hand technique and arranging music for the left hand alone.
Determined to continue his career as a performer, Wittgenstein asked the who's who of composers to write pieces for him, including Benjamin Britten, Erich Korngold, and Sergei Prokofiev.
His most enduring commission is Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.
The piece regularly appears on concert programs by the world's top pianists and even featured in the TV series M*A*S*H.
Wittgenstein premiered the concerto with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra on 5 January 1932, even though he caused a bit of friction with Ravel by changing large portions of the work in private performance before the premiere.
Creating compelling piano music for five fingers instead of 10 presents challenges for both composers and pianists.
Ravel claimed he wanted to create music for one hand which wouldn't restrict technical demands and expressivity.
"The fear of difficulty, however, is never as keen as the pleasure of contending with it, and, if possible, of overcoming it," he said leading up to the premiere of the concerto.
The piece is notoriously difficult. Early 20th-century concert pianist Alfred Cortot even arranged it for two hands and orchestra, despite Ravel forbidding publication and performance of the arrangement.
In ABC iview's The Piano, DJ explains how he translates the music he plays with just five fingers.
His thumb gets the main melody, the pinky the bass line, and the three middle fingers get "all the harmonies and subtle colours."
Series judge and pianist Judge Harry Connick Jnr explains why this is so exceptional.
"He's got his thumb, three middle fingers and his pinky doing three separate voicings …That's unbelievable," he says.
Wittgenstein's commissions paved the way for later pianists with the use of one arm, such as German pianist Siegfried Rapp, who lost his right arm in World War II.
While there is some piano music composed for the right hand alone, the catalogue is much smaller, with no-one appearing to have advocated as strongly for the repertoire as Wittgenstein.
In the 1960s, American concert pianos Leon Fleisher lost functionality in his right hand but continued a successful career as a soloist. He performed much of the music originally commissioned by Wittgenstein and grew the repertoire for the left hand by arranging music himself and commissioning new music.
Contemporary concert pianist Nicholas McCarthy is the first left-hand-only pianist to graduate from the Royal College of Music. Born without his right hand, McCarthy also focused on repertoire built by Wittgenstein, and his own arrangements.
He was recently a consultant on a project to build a piano exam syllabus of one-handed repertoire for UK-based exam board ABRSM.
Pianists like DJ are continuing those traditions today.
Being able to play again had a huge impact on his life.
Spoiler alert, DJ is one of the performers in The Piano series chosen to perform in a final concert at Sydney's City Recital Hall. "I never thought I would get this opportunity again," he says.
His final advice for anyone going through dark times: "Focus on what you love, and your love will save you."
Stream The Piano free on ABC iview or watch Sundays at 7:30pm on ABC TV.