An interesting article by Nicholas McCarthy, a left-handed pianist, in Paul Wittgenstein (Left Turns: how a terrible war injury caused the birth of a piano-music, 16 July). Wittgenstein maybe one of the first pianists who used only one hand, but there was a hands-old Pianist in Britain in the years after the Second World War.
Cyril Smith and Phyllis Sellick became a piano couple in 1941. They made the Promises and round the crowd. They use all four hands, sometimes in a piano, sometimes both. They went around the Soviet Union in 1956 when Cyril had a stroke paralyzing the left arm. Just as Wittgenstein experienced, Smith and Sellick wrote the music written or arranged for them for the rest of their races.
How do I know this? They went to play at the University of Liverpool in 1962 and I was the student who was given the work to take care of them and their page-turner.
Graham Mytton
Dorking, Surrey
