When Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein lost his right arm in the First World War, he asked Ravel to write him a piece he could play with his left hand alone. The remarkable result will be played tonight by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, a Â鶹Éç Philharmonic favourite and the work's most brilliant living champion. The three recent orchestrations of pieces from Ravel's piano cycle Miroirs include the world-premiere of a Â鶹Éç Philharmonic commission. Alongside these, Nicholas Collon unleashes Shostakovich¹s Eighth Symphony, a wartime work of such immense power that the Soviet authorities ultimately banned it.
