Curt Cacciopo

Born: ?

Beloved Emblem: Left Hand Study for Piano  1983 (Orenda Press)

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Elsa Calcagno  Argentinean  pianist and composer

Buenos Aires, 19.10.1910 - 1978

12 Preludios (6 para la mano izquierda) (12 Preludes - 6 for the left hand) (Ricordi)

Preludios para la mano izquierda, Con aire de estilo  

Preludios para la mano izquierda, Con aire pampeano  

Variaciónes classicos sobra un temada la lianura  1942 (Ricordi)

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Robert Casadesus  French pianist, composer and teacher

Paris, 07.04.1899 - Paris, 19.09.1972

Next to the older Alfred Cortot Robert Casadesus was probably the most important French pianist of the 20th century. He cam from a very talented musical family and won the first prize in piano at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 14 and the Diémer Prize at 21.
The following year he began what was to become an international career of half a century - starting in Europe and later the USA followed as well as some forty countries in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Japan. He appeared before the public nearly 3.000 times playing concerts with practically every conductor of renown and giving duo concerts with both his wife Gaby and his son Jean.
Casadesus also was a teacher of international reputation, teaching for nearly thirty years at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau and in the USA as professor and director general.
As a composer Casadesus left 69 opus numbers - among these 7 symphonies, concertos for piano, two and three pianos, flute, violin and cello and a number of chamber works and piano pieces.
He was raised to the rank of Commander of the Légion d'honneur, the Order of Léopold (Belgium), and the Order of Nassau (Netherlands).

Main Gauche (nr. 6 from 8 preludes)  1939-1940  (Durand and Schirmer)
The other seven preludes are for both hands featuring thirds, fourths, fifths, octaves and chords. Each prelude carries a dedication; nr. is dedicated to Leland Coon.

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Alice Charbonnet-Kellermann  

Born: ?

M’appari: transcription de la Romance de Martha, pour la main gauche seule (Fantasy over themes from the opera Martha by Friedrick Flotow  186? (Australia ?)
At head of title: Homage de respectueuse reconnaissance a son Excellence le Gouverneur de Victoria et a Madame la Marquise de Normandy.

Source: National Library of Australia

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Gian Paolo Chiti  Italian composer and pianist

Born. Rome,  22.01.1939

Chiti's family came from Toscana and he began to study piano, violin and composition at the age of four. When still only a child he appeared at public concerts as pianist - often with his own works - and at the age of ten he entered the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome studying piano and composition. Later followed studies in piano with Arturo Benedetti Michelangelo and conducting with Carlo Zecchi at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, earning his degree in chamber music.  He was prize winner in both the Treviso piano- and the Busoni competitions, but he finally decided, that his future was as a composer.
In 1984 he taught composition at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, where he from 1989 also functioned as assistant director. His master classes in numerous countries have a very wide span - ranging from contemporary music to Gregorian song and polyphony in the 15th and 16th century.
Gian Paolo Chiti has achieved international recognition for the programming of his music in various international festivals and events such as Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, Biennale in Venice, Edinburgh Festival,  Lutoslawski Festival,  Cantiere Internazionale of Montepulciano, Nuova Consonanza, Incontri Musicali Romani, the Chopin Festival in Poland, the Sacred Music Festival in Chartres, France, Teatro Nacional di Caraccas in Venezuela and the Public Season at the Moscow Conservatory.
Among his best known works are a violin concerto, a concert piece for orchestra, A Dylan Thomas ballet, Trivium for voice and orchestra, Nachtmusic, Pilatus e Maria (an Oratorio for Vatican Radio), choral works for several Roman cathedrals and an Artists’ Mass plus solo works for piano, violin, cello, flute, guitar and harp, and many of his most important works have already been recorded.
Beside his work with teaching and composing Chiti has been a member of numerous juries at musical competitions, he has been adviser at festivals, he has published a large number of essays and held a number of lectures beside being a member of the International counsel for Music under UNESCO and The European Music Counsel.

Prelude and fugue  (1993) (MS)
In a mail to this author Gian Paolo Chiti writes: The work Prelude and Fugue for the left hand arose from the idea to write a fugue concentrated within a brief limited part of the keyboard and to be performed with one hand only, and for reasons tied to the agility of each hand I chose the left.  The Prelude was added according to a centuries' old tradition....The work requires a large hand with great agility between the fingers. (At the premiere the pianist used both hands to play it) When the work is played with only the left hand (especially the fugue) it is much more expressive with a particular legato and the fraseggio changes.
The work is still unpublished but a recording is being issued presently.

Maestro Chiti's homepage. 

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Fredéric Chopin  Polish-French composer an piano virtuoso

Zelazowa Wola n. Warsaw, 01.03.1810 - Paris, 17.10.1849 

Beside having a thorough academic education from the Warzaw Lyceum (Gymnasium) where his French-born father taught, the young Chopin also took piano lessons from Adalbert Zywny, who probably could not learn the mostly self-educated young man much. But at the same time he was educated in harmony and counterpoint by the director of the Warsaw Conservatory Jósef Elsner.
In 1829 he made his Vienna debut and in 1831 he came to Paris to stay for the rest of his life. Much has been written about Chopin's inspiration from Hummel and Paganini whom he heard in Warzaw and from Bellini and Liszt - the latter becoming his intimate friend but the truth is - that Chopin was one of the great original creators of music making his own laws.
He is the most unique 'piano composer' in that sense that he did not write anything without the piano: 2 concertos, concert pieces, a piano trio, a cello sonata, 3 piano sonatas, etudes, polonaises, mazurkas, nocturnes, preludes, scherzos, impromptus variations and songs.

Unfortunately Chopin did not write anything for the left hand alone, but many composers and arrangers have used his works for everything from large-scaled paraphrases to simple arrangements: Godowsky, Chavez, Meinders, McEwen, Matuszewski and others. See also under Kalkbrenner.

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Ove (Christian) Christensen  Danish pianist, violinist and composer
 
Copenhagen, 18.08.1856 - Copenhagen, 05.11.1909

Ove Christensen showed remarkable musical talents already as a child and got his first education from the Ramsøe brothers (piano and violin). At he age of 13 he came to the renowned Danish pianist (and close friend of Grieg) Edmund Neupert who was forming a kind of Danish school in Denmark at that time, and Ove Christensen was soon regarded as one of Neupert's  most talented pupils.

Edmund Neupert

From 1876 he spent a year at the Royal Danish Conservatory as pupil of J. P. E. Hartmann and Niels W. Gade - and then went back to Neupert and Valdemar Tofte (violin) before he settled in St. Petersburg as Imperial Chamber Musician - first as violinist and then as pianist. 
But - due to poor health - he had to give up this position after a period of ten years, after which he returned to Copenhagen becoming a very sought-after teacher. At the same time he was very active in the local musical life as soloist and chamber music player - known for his very intelligent performances. Ove Christensen also founded a musical society Vor Forening (Our Union) in which a great number of the finest musicians and composers of Copenhagen met.

Ove Christensen

His last years were marked by his bad health but in 1900 he was awarded the honorary title of Professor (NB. the title of Professor - like the one of Doctor has quite another meaning in Denmark than it has in countries with which we normally compare ourselves. To be called a doctor you would have to have written a doctor's dissertation with success, and only after that you might be elected professor - meaning the highest rank of teacher at a university - but I guess that is the only point where we don't have inflation in Denmark). Ove Christensen was not and easy man; he was charming and made a lot of friends  - but also some enemies. He would through parties of extreme lavishness with Beluga caviar and other delicacies from all over the world - nothing was spared. But even very close friends withdrew from him by time.
Eight years after Ove Christensen death his daughter Vera and her husband Ernst Michaelsen created a foundation for the support of talented Danish musicians. One of the most famous receivers from this foundation was the composer, pianist and accompanist Hermann D. Koppel in 1956. Koppel was by Carl Nielsen (of whom he also was a pupil) considered the best interpreter of his piano music. This fund does not exist any more but is joined with other funds of similar purposes - administered by the Danske Bank, and no one has heard of it since.

	Ove Christensen's signature.

3 Etüden  (1907) (Schmidt) 

Photos of Ove Christensen: Det kongelige Bibliotek (Royal Library), Copenhagen  

Artur Cimirro  Brazilian pianist and composer

Born: Bagé, Rio Grande do Sul,  Brazil, 30.09.1982 

Cimirro started his musical studies as an autodidact (in 1995), with the guitar; His first contact with a piano was in 1996, but it was not until 2001 he started to study this instrument seriously . 
Between the years of 2003 and 2004, he attended classes with Maestro Leandro Menezes Faber and participated in master classes by pianists such as Liana Embovika-Rivkin, Silvana Libardo, Mauricy Martin, Gilberto Tinetti (pupil of Alfred Cortot and Friedrich Wührer), Dario Ntaca, and others.
Apart from the left hand works below Artur Cimirro's output consists of works for piano (both hands), piano and orchestra and orchestral pieces.
His repertoire of works for solo piano and piano with orchestra is so startling that I advice you to visit his home page .

Toccata, Intermezzo & Romance op. 9  (MS)
Composed in September 2007 and dedicated to Frédéric Meinders

Albeniz: Asturias (Leyenda) (2006) (MS)
Albeniz - Asturias was a challenge of a great friend, a French pianist, he asked me why don't you play Asturias with left hand only  and me why not?.

Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565  (2006) (MS)
The Toccata and Fugue in D minor is my favorite work by Bach and Carl Tausig's transcription was the first complete piece I played in my life (and first I played it in public in 1997). 
In my transcription for the left hand I was trying to keep the organ atmosphere with the great sound. It is very difficult to play. (By the way it is also a favorite of this author and the first piece I performed on the organ in Copenhagen).

Bach: Prelude BWV 999  (2007) (MS)
The Prelude BWV 999 I did for one of my private students (to develop his left hand technique)

Beethoven: Symphony no.7, A-major op. 72: 2. movement; Allegretto  (MS)
Transcribed August 12 2007.
The dedication to me of this transcription was a great surprise and a very happy and gratifying moment for me since it one of my favorite movements among Beethoven's symphonies with its melancholic beauty. Originally intended for his Rasumoffsky Quartet in C (op. 59 no. 3) it is close - but only close to funeral march with a steady rhythm of a dactyl and a spondee: Ɩ - u u Ɩ - - Ɩ and then Beethoven suddenly adds a most lovely legato melody which has been concealed under this incessant pulse. Genial - indeed - and Cimirro brings this out in his wonderful transcription - and to great effect. 

Brahms: Symphony No.1 Op.68 (2006) (MS)
The Brahms Symphony for the left hand was an internet joke some years ago. Someone asked on April 1^st in a forum for a left hand version made by Godowski. I heard this joke in 2005, and decided to make it and show it in April 1^st 2006 in the same forum. But I gave up uploading it because some people were selling scores uploaded in these forums.
(With people like Mozart and Beethoven there are no copyrights  - but there is a group of people who like vermin and parasites prey on living composers and sell their scores on the Internet - thus depriving these great artists of their legally rightful income. I cannot warn you enough against these persons who have neither ethics nor any respect for international law. Many of these are placed in "high" positions and I am surprised at their doings - but no one seem to be able to touch them. If I were to judge they should be forced to be playing Steibelt works for the rest of time - since they are no more worth - authors comment).

Chopin: Fantaisie-Impromptu Op.66  (2007) (MS)
I decided to make 2 different transcriptions of this piece; one as a study in fourths and the other with inversion of the hands - but after working with the second for some time I saw it would be possible to play it with one hand - and this is it; dated December 2007.

Liszt: Études Transcendantales no. 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, & 10  (MS)

Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2  (MS)

Rachmaninov: Symphony No.2 Op.27 (3^. Movement: Adagio) (2007) (MS)
The 3^rd Movement of Rachmaninov 2^nd Symphony was transcribed by a friend for 4 hands, and this friend made also a composition to me, so I made this transcription in return.

Rimsky-Korsakov: Flight of the Bumble-bee (2006) (MS)
The Flight of the Bumble-bee was made as my first virtuoso transcription, but in a version more difficult than György Cziffra's, with lots of thirds, fifths and octaves. The left hand  was made in less than one hour - it was just the time to write all the notes.

Schubert: Erlkönig (d'après Géza Zichy) (2005) (MS)
This was my first work for the left hand - and almost a revision of Géza Zichy's version, only more pianistic and resonant.

Schubert: Ständchen (Serenade) D. 957/4 (From Schwanengesang)  (MS)
This both charming and very effective piece was transcribed January 21 2008 as a present for Cimirro's grandmother, Maria Diva Moreira Cimirro.

Wagner: Walkürenritt (from the opera Die Walküre)
Watch and listen to Artur Cimirro playing this staggering transcription on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9DFLyCMgvQ

T. L. Clemens 

Born: ? 

Oktavetude (Chapell)

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Willem Coenen  Dutch pianist and composer

Rotterdam, 17.11.1837 - Lugano, 18.03,1918

The Coenen family is - like that of Andriessen - a family which includes many musicians and composers. Willem's brother Franz (1826-1904) was a well-known violinist and composer. Their father was organist in Rotterdam and Franz's son Louis (1856-1905) became known as a notable (but rather academic) pianist. 
Willem Coenen was trained in Holland  - by all evidence by his father, but after touring America for some years he finally settled in London in 1862 where he lived as a well-esteemed piano teacher.
Among his compositions are the oratorio Lazarus, songs and music for piano. As for his style, it has been described as majestic, ambitious and of pianistically adventurous romanticism. Then - one wonders - why is he not played more often?. 

Fantasia on The Last Rose of Summer 1864 (MS)

Fantasia on God Save the Queen  1864 (MS)

Photo of Coenen by courtesy of Nederlands Muziek Instituut

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Felix De Cola  See under catalogue D

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John Corigliano  American composer

Born: New York, 16.02.1938

Corigliano comes from a very musical family. His father was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from 1943 to 1966 and his mother was an accomplished pianist.
Corigliano first came to prominence after winning the chamber music prize at the 1964 Spoleto Festival, Italy for his Sonata for Violin and Piano. Then other important commissions followed from the New York Philharmonic (Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, Fantasia on an Ostinato), Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (Poem in October), New York State Council on the Arts (Oboe Concerto), the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Promenade Overture) and flutist James Galway (Pied Piper Fantasy).

	Sir James Galway

Today Corigliano is internationally celebrated as one of the leading composers of his generation. In orchestral pieces, chamber music, opera and film work, he has won global acclaim for his highly expressive and compelling compositions and his kaleidoscopic, ever-expanding technique and he holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Music at Lehman College, City University of New York and, in 1991, was named to the faculty of The Juilliard School.
Awards, prizes and commissions have come in plenty to Corigliano and his works have been performed world-wide. Among these are his two symphonies, the opera The Ghost of Versailles, the Red violin Chaconne (extracted from his music to a motion picture) and The Dylan Thomas Trilogy.
His chamber music ranges from large-scale solo piano works Etude Fantasy to Poem in October for tenor and chamber ensemble to his String Quartet, commissioned by the Cleveland Quartet for their valedictory performance. Corigliano's honors include the Composer of the Year from Musical America in 1991, the President's Medal awarded by the president of Georgetown University, and the Boston Symphony's Horblit Award for Distinguished Composition by an American Composer. He is a member since 1991 of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

(Etude-Fantasy)  1976 (Schirmer)
This lengthy piece is included although it can hardly be described as a genuine left-hand piece. It is in five part and only the first part is for the left hand - but already during the transition from the first to the second the right hand suddenly joins in  pianissimo at the top of the keyboard. Pity - since the left hand part of the work is very effective and well-written for the left hand alone. The inspiration to the left hand part of the work came, when Corigliano attended a recital by the pianist James Tocco who gave Blumenfeld's Etude as an encore.

Photo of Corigliano: Christian Steiner

Etude-Fantasy is recorded by Stephen Hough, Hyperion CDA 67005

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Wilde Flucht vor Rübern op. 39  (Berlin: Hoffheinz)
Mentioned in Hofmeisters Handbuch der Klavierliteratur, 1898-1903 p. 154

Carl (Johannes Otto) Cortzen  Danish organist, pianist and composer

Copenhagen, 18.08.1828  - Odense, 1899

Cortzen's father was a rather unsuccessful farmer, who finally chose to move to Copenhagen to find another job. As a boy Carl of ten years he learned to play the piano all by himself, but in Copenhagen the composer C. F. E. Weyse heard him and saw to it that he had proper instruction in piano and in theory with Carl Helsted.

	Carl (Adolph) Helsted 1818-1904		Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse 1774-1842

In 1846 he gave a concert at the Court Theatre, (which is now more or less a part of the governmental building Christiansborg in Copenhagen with the status of a museum) and the same year he played Hummel's concerto in A minor (nr. 2 op. 85) at the Royal Theatre and during the following years he gave concerts in many cities of Denmark, Schleswig, Holstein, Sweden and Norway - often together with the cellist Kellermann.

	Christian Laurentz Kellermann 1815-1866 A cello-virtuoso of extreme gifts who travelled most of Europe as another Paganini of the cello.

In 1863 Cortzen settled in Odense on Funen (the town where Hans Christian Andersen was born) and in 1876 he was appointed organist at St. Knud's Cathedral in Odense.

	St. Knud's Cathedral in Odense

He published some piano pieces, Trois Pièces melodiques, some song and a funeral march for organ and brass. Very few of these pieces have been published.

Serenade  (Norwegian Music Edition 1517) 

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Caroline H. Crawford  

Born: ?

A Summer Shower (A Study in Broken Octaves) op. 5  1919 (Wood)

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Ferdinand de Croze  

Born: 1828

xxx

Étude cromatique on a march from Bellini's opera I Puritani  (C. Fischer)

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Boldizsar Csiky  Romanian composer and pianist

Born: 03.10.1937 - 

xxx

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Curtis (Otto Bismarck) Curtis-Smith  American composer, pianist and teacher 

Walla Walla nr. Seattle WA, 1941 -

Mr. Curtis-Smith took both his BM and MM at the Northwestern University School of Music. He has since been the recipient of more than 100 grants, awards and commissions, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Tanglewood Koussevitzky Prize, the Medaglia d’Oro from the Concorso Internazionale di Musica e Danza, the Prix du Salabert, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Concorso Internazionale de Composizione, 26 consecutive ASCAP Awards, and grants from the Rockefeller Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, the Arts Foundation of Michigan, the State of Michigan Governor’s Award, and in 2000, an award from the Barlow Endowment. Presently Curtis-Smith is a faculty member of the Michigan University. 

Concerto for piano (left hand) and orchestra; (Three movements: 1. Lento agitato - Allegro con fuoco, 2. Larghetto, 3. Moto Perpetuo)
This work was commissioned by the Irving S. Gilmore Keyboard Festival for Leon Fleisher and premiered there by him in 1991. Leon Fleisher has also performed the work with the Detroit Symphony, the New Japan Philharmonic, and with the American Composers Orchestra in Carnegie Hall.

Leon Fleisher
Photo © SONY Music Entertainment

Curtis-Smith seems - like Rachmaninoff - to have been fascinated by bells. This is demonstrated from the very beginning of the work, and - according to the composer - the 3rd. movement is supposed to be Brilliant and ringing.

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Carl Czerny  Austrian pianist, teacher and composer

Vienna, 20.02.1791 - Vienna, 15.07.1857

In different books you will find his first name spelled both Karl and Carl (even Grove's fifth edition has Karl), so let's have this mystery solved once and for all:

Here is his own signature on a contract from 1855
and the headstone on his grave at Zentralfriedhof
in Vienna has his name spelled the same way.

Carl grew up in a family with a father who was an accomplished musician and who taught the boy to play piano very early - so he was soon able to play many of the great composers' master pieces by heart. Among his parents' friends was the violinist Wenzel Krumphollz (1750 - 1817)  whose influence on the boy was of great importance since he was not only a great admirer of Beethoven but also one of the (already famous) composer's very close friends. 
So in 1801 he took the boy to meet Beethoven who at once offered to teach him and during the next three years Czerny made immense progress both in piano playing in general but also in the interpretation of his master's works. The relationship between teacher and student became more or less paternal and Czerny also profited from the meeting with other famous musicians with whom Beethoven came in contact - such as Hummel and Clementi, whose teaching method he studied closely. Before long Czerny was one of Vienna's most sought-after teachers himself - so much indeed that he could afford only to take those pupils which he thought were of special talent. 

  Carl Czerny 
Lithography by Kriehuber   

He had very little ambition of performing in public himself and therefore he withdrew almost completely from public life but he did play the premiere of the Emperor concerto (11th February 1812) as Beethoven - who had premiered the first four concertos himself - had realized that his days of public performance were over due to his progressing deafness. But Czerny also studied composition with great ardour. His first composition was published in 1805 and after being introduced to the publishers Cappi and Anton Diabelli his works became so popular that he often had to work at night after a day with up till twelve students to satisfy the demands.
Beethoven was also introduced to Czerny's parents in whose house there was given matinees every sunday by the best of his pupils and the peaceful orderly family life he witnessed here made such an impact on him, that he even proposed to move in there. (One wonders what Mrs. Czerny thought of that idea). Czerny's three most famous pupils were Theodor Döhler, Franz Liszt and Theodor Leschetizky the latter giving a very affectionate and intimate picture of his great teacher:
Czerny was a great musician, an unequalled teacher and a very sensitive person. The Viennese have never appreciated him justly - they didn't know what they had in him. But he was an old man and even though we stood at the beginning of a new era in music his roots were so firmly planted in the old one, to which he belonged with body and soul that he had very little understanding of the new. Chopin's passionate and moving music with its free tempo rubato and its glowing romantic ecstasy was alien to the old man and left him cold. "Go ahead and play him, children" he said to us "for it is good piano music" - but it was only a succès d'estime.
Czerny's productivity was fabulous - just the part which has been published amounts to more than 1000 pieces and many of the opus numbers contain up till 50 pieces each. But besides this there is an enormous amount of manuscripts stored in the archives of Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna containing 24 masses, 4 requiems, 300 graduals and offertories, symphonies, concertos, chamber music and songs. In 1851 he published a book on the history of music Umriss der ganzen Musikgeschichte and he even found time to write an autobiography.
His educational works for piano have been standard works for nearly 150 years and if studied in the right way they can produce pianists of the very highest standard and his etudes range from the very simplest exercises to virtuoso pieces that even Horowitz included in his repertory.
About Carl Czerny's relationship to Beethoven and their first meeting see appendix

2 Etudes op. 735  1846 (Meschetti)

Etude for one hand alone in A major

Sechs Etuden aus Kunst der Fingerfertigkeit  (W. Hansen WH 11664)

(Die Schule der linken Hand. Band, op. 399)  Op. 399 consists of 10 studies  (Anton Door und Emil Breslaur)

(Etuden für die linke Hand op. 718)  Three volumes with 24 studies
These are not works for the left hand alone but studies where the composer puts all the difficulties in the left hand.

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