When Nicholas McCarthy was 14 he had an epiphany during school assembly. He sat in the audience, watching as a friend played a piece by Beethoven, and in that moment saw the rest of his life unfold. “It felt like this is what I was put on this Earth to do,” he recalls.
That night he couldn’t wait to share the news with his family. “I said, ‘Mum, Mum, I want to be a concert pianist.’ And I remember her face – smiling, but slightly blank, thinking ‘you’ve got one arm, darling, are you sure? There’s some easier options out there.’”
Nicholas McCarthy performing with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
But his parents were supportive and McCarthy, who was born without a right hand, threw himself into learning. They bought him a keyboard and, through a combination of listening to the radio and watching YouTube, McCarthy spent hours in his room teaching himself to play and finding his own way around the keyboard.
“I used to play with what I call my ‘little arm’,” he explains. “I’ve got most of my [right] arm, and then I’ve got my elbow, and then some of my forearm, and then it stops. And so my little arm is able to play one single note. Anything with a one-note melody line, a one note-tune in the right hand I could play.”
He improved rapidly and started taking lessons – but it wasn’t until he turned 17 that he learned that there was music written for left-hand only players. “It’s incredibly tough.”
The music he now found himself immersed in mostly originated in the 19th century and first came about because pianists wanted to show off.
“Concert pianists, they were like rock stars,” says McCarthy. “That kind of fandom that we’re quite used to seeing with pop now was very much present with the likes of concert pianists of the 19th century.” So, to amp up their fans, at the end of a concert they’d often perform a one-handed work, with their ‘weaker’ left hand, just to show that they could. “That’s where left-hand repertoire started. Then we fast-forward in time to the 20th century, and the First World War happens.”
Among the many thousands of soldiers returning from battle with missing or injured limbs was pianist Paul Wittgenstein, elder brother of philosopher Ludwig and son of wealthy industrialist Karl. Upon Wittgenstein’s return to Vienna, “he used his position in society, his wealth, and his family connections, to commission the leading stars of the 20th century to write left-hand alone for him,” explains McCarthy.
Now there are over 3000 works written for left-hand alone, with McCarthy being part of the charge to have new works commissioned as well as helping craft a syllabus for one-handed players. “I just wanted to create this so that people didn’t really have to jump through the hoops that I had to jump through,” he says.
Despite the existence of this work and the support of his family, McCarthy was met with roadblocks along the pathway towards his chosen career. “I had lots of resistance, and lots of people tell me that I couldn’t do that, or that I wasn’t going to succeed, or that this is going to be an impossible career choice,” he explains. “I kind of used that negativity to fuel me,” he reflects. “I think if I had an easy time of it, I’m not sure I’d have been as driven.”
Nicholas McCarthy will perform with the MSO for the first time in October 2025.Credit: Paul Marc Mitchell
In 2012 he became the only one-handed musician to graduate from the Royal College of Music in its 130-year history. Since then he has launched a successful career, releasing recordings and performed across the United Kingdom and all over the world.
In October next year McCarthy, now 35, will make his first trip to Australia in order to perform with the MSO. At that concert he will be performing Ravel’s Piano Concerto of the Left Hand, which, until very recently was most often performed by two-handed pianists.
Nicholas McCarthy is presented by the then Prince Charles with honorary membership of the Royal College of Music in 2018.Credit: Getty Images
He speaks of the concerto both like an old friend and a favourite story – about the visceral, low groan of the opening, through to an extended cadenza that runs for almost nine pages of black notes that sounds “almost like water rippling”.
His love of the work is matched only by his enthusiasm for how an artist’s relationship with music changes over the course of a career – he’s been performing the Ravel for a long time, but knows that as his life changes, these changes will be reflected in his interpretation of the work. “Music is about always discovering, always learning,” he says. “No two performances are the same and that’s what I love about it.”
Nicholas McCarthy will perform with the MSO at Impressions of Paris on October 23 and 25, 2025 at Hamer Hall.