One-handed British pianist is carrying forward the legacy of those who came before him

CBC

21-07-2025

Nicholas McCarthy is often described as the world's only professional one-handed concert pianist. But he wasn't the first, and he has no intention of being the last.
"Each century from the 19th century tended to have this kind of one well-known concert pianist who had one hand," McCarthy told As It Happens guest host Megan Williams.
"In the 21st century, I find myself being that one-handed pianist who seems to have more prominence. So I feel a lot of responsibility."
On Sunday, the British pianist made his debut at The Proms, one of Britain's most prestigious classical music concert series, held annually at London's Royal Albert Hall, and broadcast on BBC.
It was a dream come true for McCarthy — and one he says he couldn't have achieved without the thick skin that comes with having a lifelong disability, and a road paved by those who came before him.
"I am still on a high. I'm absolutely buzzing," he said. "I would say this is really the pinnacle of my career so far."
A 'full-circle moment'
For his Proms debut, McCarthy regaled the audience with Maurice Ravel's bravura Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, alongside the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
The deceivingly rich piece is probably the most famous left-hand-only piano composition, he says. And it only exist because it was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, an Austrian-American concert pianist who lost his right arm in the First World War.
It was one of several pieces Wittgenstein commissioned from prominent composers as he sought to build his post-war career, while developing novel techniques for one-handed play.
"It's really thanks to him that I'm able to have the career that I have today, because I'm able to play these wonderful big famous works," McCarthy said.
Piano Concerto for the Left Hand has been performed many times in the festival's 130-year-history, usually by two-handed pianists showing off their skills with their non-dominant hand.
But McCarthy is only the second one-handed pianist to perform the piece at The Proms. The last, he says, was Wittgenstein himself in 1951.
"It's really a full-circle moment," McCarthy said.
Humble roots and a late start
McCarthy was born without a right hand, but his disability wasn't the only obstacle on his journey to becoming a professional concert pianist.
While most of his industry peers spent their childhoods studying classical music and practicing for hours on end, McCarthy says he spent his youth playing outdoors with his friends and doing regular kid stuff.
"We come from a very non-musical family. Just normal pop stuff on the radio, you know, normal, working-class parents," he said.
But at the age of 14, McCarthy heard his friend playing a Beethoven composition at school, and his whole life changed.
"I just had one of those — it sounds corny — of those kind of Oprah Winfrey moments, you know, these kind of life-changing, lightbulb moments where I was like, wow, this is what I want to do for my career. I want to be a pianist," he said.
It didn't even occur to him in that moment that he couldn't do it, he says.
"You remember what it was like when you're 14," he said. "Everything's so possible, you know, full of teenage invincibility."
But not everyone believed in his dream the way he did.
"The early part of my career, for sure, I was being told left, right and centre by very respected people in the industry that I should give up, you know, this wasn't the career for me," he said.
"It used to be fuel to my fire, almost, that's what kept me going and kept me focused on what I believed and what I knew I could do, which was obviously proven last night."
A vast repertoire of left-hand only music
Most piano compositions weren't made with someone like McCarthy in mind, but he didn't have to start from scratch.
He says there is a surprisingly vast repertoire of piano music written for the left hand alone — roughly 3,000 solo pieces, and several dozen concertos.
"It's all left-handed, and not right-hand alone, which I always find quite an interesting fact," he said.
Many were commissioned by Wittgenstein, while others were commissioned or composed by Count Géza Zichy, a Hungarian composer who lost his right arm in a hunting accident in the 1860s.
But many more, McCarthy said, were written in the 19th century for two-handed pianists to wow audiences.
"Concert pianists would perform a wonderful bravura encore at the end of their amazing recitals," he said. "As a play on irony, they used to kind of say, 'You thought I was good with two hands. Wait till you see what I can do with my weaker hand!'"
Now that McCarthy is in the spotlight like Wittgenstein and Zichy before him, he makes a point of regularly commissioning new left-hand pieces to build on the rich repertoire he's benefited so greatly from.