Leon Fleisher, pianist who adapted with panache when he lost the use of one hand – obituary

Leon Fleisher, who has died aged 92, was an American pianist who for almost 40 years performed with only one hand because of a neurological condition known as focal dystonia; his plight recalled that of Paul Wittgenstein, the Austrian pianist who built a career performing works for the left hand after the amputation of his right arm during the First World War.

Fleisher had enjoyed a successful early career, making debuts in his teens in San Francisco and New York under the conductor Pierre Monteux, who described him as “the pianistic find of the century”. However, in the summer of 1964 he noticed that the fourth and fifth fingers of his right hand were starting to curl uncontrollably.

For a while, the situation seemed hopeless. “I tried everything from aromatherapy to Zen Buddhism,” he told The Daily Telegraph in 2004. “It was devastating for two years. I was in a very deep depression, I can’t deny it.” He grew a ponytail and beard, bought a red Vespa and spent his days riding around Baltimore, where he taught at the Peabody Conservatory.

Gradually he realised that there were other ways to make music than through two-handed piano-playing. Although the big concertos of Beethoven and Brahms had to be jettisoned, he began performing pieces that had been commissioned by Wittgenstein, such as Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, Prokofiev’s Fourth Piano Concerto and Britten’s Diversions.

Building on Wittgenstein’s legacy he also championed new works for one-handed pianists, including a concerto from the German composer Lukas Foss that was performed in Manchester by the Hallé Orchestra in 1995. In the final bars the orchestral players shout: “Here’s to LF from LF.”

In 2005 Fleisher gave the first performance of Klaviermusik (1923) by the modernist composer Paul Hindemith. It had been written for Wittgenstein, who disliked it so much that he refused to play it. However, he had retained the sole performing rights and denied other musicians access to the score, which was found among his widow’s papers after her death in 2002.

Fleisher also began to conduct, and continued with his teaching, but in the latter found that he needed a new approach. “I could no longer push the student off the stool and say, ‘This is what I mean’,” he said.

Although his condition was incurable, by the late 1980s it had been formally diagnosed. The rise in popularity in the early 2000s of Botox, often used to smooth out facial wrinkles, proved to be his salvation, and after a series of injections he was restored to full ambidexterity.

In November 2008 Fleisher showed off his newly restored skills at the Wigmore Hall in London that was full to bursting with his admiring fans. In a review headlined “Bach on Botox”, Ivan Hewett declared in The Daily Telegraph: “It was a wonderful concert, which proved that though Fleisher’s performing life may have been turned upside-down twice, fundamentally he hasn’t changed at all.”

Leon Fleisher was born in San Francisco on July 23 1928, the younger of two sons of Isidor and Bertha Fleisher, Jewish milliners from eastern Europe. Young Leon showed such promise at the piano that he was reputedly the only child to be taught by the legendary Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel, from whom he inherited his fluid legato tone.

He came to Europe in 1952, where he was the first American to win the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium and performed Brahms’s First Piano Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra under Josef Kripps. For the next 10 years or so he was a regular visitor, with critics praising his Wigmore Hall recital in 1958 as “exemplary” and “masterly”, a view confirmed by recordings such as his Beethoven concertos from 1956 and 1957 with Otto Klemperer.

After recovering from the depression brought on by his condition, Fleischer reappeared in Britain in 1973 as a one-handed pianist, with a crisp and alert account of the Ravel Concerto conducted by André Previn at the Edinburgh Festival. However, until the success of the Botox injections his appearances were rare events.

In 2010 Fleisher published a memoir, My Nine Lives, with Anne Midgette and two years later he performed at the US Supreme Court at the invitation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Although he happily returned to the big classical repertoire, he told the Telegraph that if he had his career over again, he was not sure that he would do it differently. “I’ve had some of the great joys of my life as something other than a two-handed pianist,” he concluded.

Leon Fleisher’s first marriage, in 1951, was to Dorothy “Dot” Druzinsky; they had two daughters and a son. His second, in 1962, was to Rikki Rosenthal; they had a son and a daughter. Both marriages were dissolved. His third, in 1982, was to Katherine Jacobson, his former student with whom he gave duet recitals. She survives him with his children.

Leon Fleisher, born July 23 1928, died August 2 2020