Giusto Severo Pertinace Dacci  Italian composer and pianist

Parma, 01.09.1840 - Parma, 05.04.1915

Dacci was educated at the Royal Parma School of Music which he entered as a boarder at the age of eleven with Riccardo Grunthner as piano teacher and Giovanni Rossi as teacher of composition, and it was here he spent the rest of his working life as piano teacher, professor of harmony and eventually, in 1875, director and Composer in Residence. As director of the School he also kept a personal diary which is rich on anecdotes and gossip about the School and the city.
When the School was closed in 1888 to make way for the new Music Conservatory he was passed over as director by Verdi in favor of Giovanni Bottesini and later Franco Faccio, but nevertheless Dacci remained on the staff as teacher of composition until his retirement in 1899.  

	Giovanni Bottesini 24.12.1821 - 07.07.1889 Verdi's choice of this double bass  virtuoso seems strange today and  one might suspect that it was not  based entirely on only professional  reasons - but rather personal ones

As a bachelor Dacci bequeathed his estate to the Conservatory to provide prizes for deserving students. 
His more than 500 compositions include songs, piano pieces, chamber music and  fantasies on opera tunes for various instruments, including five for clarinet and piano. For the orchestra he wrote La ridda, Sinfonia for large orchestra and Don Carlo, fantasy for large orchestra. Among his church music are several Masses and three Requiems and finally it should be remembered that he wrote many educational papers. Complete list (in Italian) of his works.
His perhaps most prominent pupil of composition was Arturo Toscanini. There were som clashes between teacher and student - already then showing his iron will. Toscanini used some of his time to play cello in an opera orchestra which he was not supposed to do and at some other time he participated in a revolt among the students refusing to get out of their beds to go to morning mass. With Toscanini these thing only resulted in reprimands and not expulsion - Dacci obviously didn't want to loose his best student.

Toscanini's  Berceuse for piano  
- one of his student works

Hugo van Dalen Dutch pianist and composer

Dordrecht, 16.04.1888 – 's-Gravenhage, 24.02.1 967

Van Dalen studied the piano with Johan Wijsman and Julius Röntgen in Amsterdam, with Wenen  and Busoni in Berlin. Here he became ddocent in 1914 at the Klindworth-Scharwenka conservatory where he earlier had met Sergej Bortkiewicz with whom he formed a life-long friendship and supportet him in all ways.
Van Dalen also gave the premiere of Bortkiewicz's first piano concerto with the Blüthner Orchestra; indeed piano music by East European composers became somewhat a speciality of van Dalen's and he wrote biographies of Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky.
He became a docent at the Royal Dutch Conservatory in the Hague and recieved (1940) a knighthood (order of King Leopold II) from the Belgian government.

Elegie ad lib pour la main gauche  MS (Nederlands Muziek Institut)

d'Alessandro see under catalogue A

Gustave Damm  pseudonym for the publisher Theodor Leberecht Steingräber  German pianist, teacher and publisher

Neustadt-am-Orla, 25.01.1830 - Leipzig, 05.04.1904

Steingräber was son of the piano manufacturer Johann Gottlieb Steingräber (1800-1861) and he was trained as a pianist and teacher and worked as such for quite a number of years during which he published the Piano School (1868) mentioned below, and which is still used. 
On January 1st 1878 he founded his publishing firm in Leipzig and for many years it was run by the family; 1918-1926 by his son-in-law, Hofmusikalienhändler Walter Friedel (who also from 1920 to 1926 continued the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik which was started by Robert Schumann April 3rd 1834) and after his death in 1926 by his widow, Clara  (who died in 1953) together with Steingräber's other daughter Mathilde (who died in 1945). During WW II the company was totally destructed, but immediately after war the firm was reestablished - in 1953  moving to Frankfurt on Main and June 1st 1956 to Offenbach am Mein. 
During the years Edition Steingräber had acquired a sound reputation for its publications. Among its most important were Kullak's revised editions of the classics, Hans Bishoff's edition in 7 volumes of Bach's piano music - which appeared from 1880 to 1889 and Phrasing editions by Hugo Riemann. 
"Damm" published Klavierschule und Melodienschatz für die Jugend - Musikstücke zu zwei und vier Händen I - II, Technische Übungen, zur vorbereitung auf Tausig's Tägliche Studien.

Übungsbuch nach der Clavierschule; 16 leichte Etuden  (Steingräber)
(one or more pieces in this collection is/are for the left hand alone)

Ram Da-Oz (born: Avraham Daus)  Israeli pianist and composer

Born: Berlin, 17.10.1929 

Already as a child of five he settled with his parents in Palestine (now: Israel) in 1934. Here he studied the oboe and the piano at  the Conservatory in Tel Aviv  and composition with Andre Hajdu at the Music Academy there. While still a student he  joined the Israeli Defence Force in the war of Independence in 1948.
Here he was wounded and lost his eyesight. Nevertheless he continued his musical studies of e.g. composition with Professor A. Hajos and graduated from the Israel Academy of Music in Tel-Aviv, in 1953. He later made his home in Haifa.
His important works originate from the mid-fifties and up till now and encompass orchestral works, chamber music, piano and songs.

Kemo menu'et li-fasenter yad 'semol bi-levad (Quasi menuetto for piano for the left hand alone)  1999 (Patterson)

Richard Danielpour  American composer and pianist

Born: New York, 28.01.1956

Richard Danielpour studied at the New England Conservatory and the Juilliard School with Vincent Persichetti and Peter Mennin. He also was trained as a pianist by Lorin Hollander, Veronica Jochum, and Gabriel Chodos. 
His music has also been performed by the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome, the Cologne Radio Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre National de Lyon, the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra as well as the symphony orchestras of Dallas, Montreal, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minnesota, St. Louis, Seattle, and Utah. He has been championed by such performing artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, Dawn Upshaw, Emanuel Ax, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Gary Graffman, Christopher O'Riley, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, the Guarneri, Emerson, Muir, and American String Quartets, and conductors David Zinman, Charles Dutoit, Kurt Masur, Zdenek Macal and Leonard Bernstein.
Danielpour's music is made from large and romantic gestures, brilliantly orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant.
Among his most important compositions are the orchestral works Toward the Splendid City and Through the Ancient Valley, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra: A Fool's Paradise, Symphony No. 2, Song of Remembrance, and the Cello Concerto and the 2nd piano concerto with the rather liquid title Absolute Vodka. Among his chamber music work are a Piano Quintet and Sonnets to Orpheus Book I and II.

Zodiac Variations (piano concerto nr. 3)  (2001)
Written for Gary Graffman and premiered by him with the National Philharmonic and Leonard Slatkin. 

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Natalie Davenport

Two piano pieces for the left hand (Romanze in C and Waltz in D)  1906 (Ashdown, London)

Evan Thomas Davies

Pontmorlais, Wales, UK, 10.04.1878 - Aberdare 25.12.1969

Evan Thomas was brought up in a musical environment in Dowlais and got his first musical education  from one Harry Evans and gained such notice that on tour to the US he he came to be regarded as the leading musician in his native district, and as a worthy successor to his tutor Harry Evans.
He became organist at Pontmorlais chapel , Merthyr Tydfil  from 1903 till 1917, and was a part-time singing teacher in Merthyr Tydfil secondary school.
As a solo organist were in great demand, and he was said to have inaugurated about one hundred new organs in Wales and England . In 1920 he was appointed the first full-time director of music of the University College , Bangor
He first came into prominence as a composer after winning the first prize for ‘ Ynys y Plant ’ in the national eisteddfod held in London in 1909 , and although he was not a very prolific composer , and tended to regard composing merely as a hobby, he had a beneficial influence upon Welsh music for more than half a century. Besides writing a few songs, he also composed part-songs, anthems and works for various musical instruments and instrumental groups, and about 40 of his tunes, chants and anthems are to be found in various collections of tunes.  His arrangements of over a hundred of these songs, (many of them produced when the composer was in old age) have great artistic merit. 

Roses of Yesterday; Waltz  1915 (Willis )

Claude (Achille) Debussy  French composer

Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 22.08.1862 - Paris, 25.03.1918

Debussy studied at the Conservatoire Nationale de Paris under Guiraud, Marmontel and Lavignac and evolved into one of the most original pianists of his time. His output includes the opera Peléas et Mélisande, several important works for the orchestra (La mer and Prélude a l'après-midi d'un faune), chamber music and songs - but it is probably his vast œvre for piano which is the major cause for his fame as the central impressionistic composer.

(Clair de lune; no. 3 from Suite bergamasque)  See James Marchand

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Felix De Cola  South African-American composer, author and entertainer. The family insists on placing Felix under letter "D". This is hereby done with thanks to his kind son, Lee.

Cape town, 17.12.1906 - Los Angeles, 25.04.1983

De Cola was educated as a pianist and ran a music school in his native city giving concerts with the South African Symphony Orchestra until 1943 when he emigrated to America.
Here he had several radio and TV shows (included among the first US Emmy nominees in 1949) and his TV shows were rated number three in popularity in 1948. Beside this he composed sheet music and invented musical devices for the blind and the Easy-Chord, which enabled the keyboard player - in those pre-digital piano days - to play whole chords with only one finger.

	Felix de Cola's Easy-Chord Photographed and reproduced here kind  with kind permission of Lee de Cola

In fact he was a polymath of great ingenuity. I first encountered his name when I was given a copy of a musical quiz made by de Cola. It contained 18 well-known classical themes but on one side you had only the rhytme (on the tone C) and on the other page were the tunes but witout the rhytme (all written as crotches) - even trills and ornaments). 
Outside the US he is today mostly remembered as the man who gave piano lessons to Harpo Marx, which must have been something of an experience, since Harpo never learned to read notes. According to his son Harpo  invented his own special kind of notation for his harp playing. (Next time you watch a Marx Brother movie, remember to watch Harpo's face when he is playing. All the clownishness is gone and what you see is a deeply concentrated man dedicated to his art).

Harpo Marx

Felix de Cola was very interested in left hand playing and had an article published in the Clavier magazine, March 1967 (pp 25-26): The Elegant Art: Playing the Piano with the Left Hand Alone. Beside telling about left hand playing in general it contains - what could be called a do it yourself course in arranging music for the left hand alone. Of course it won't take you very far but through some simple examples it helps you to understand the nature of left hand playing. Thus it deserves to be quoted here with the kind permission of Lee de Cola - the composer's son:

Basically what has to be done to arrange a piece for the left hand alone is this:
The accompaniment figure, (chords, arpeggi etc.) must be "sneaked" in while the melody note is sustained. Hence it will be apparent that pieces with a very "busy" melody line (such as Chopin's "Fantasie Impromptu") are not good material, since there is never an opportunity for the left hand to leave the melody so as to insert an accompaniment. It is possible, of course on many occasions to combine melody and accompaniment, playing both simultaneously. This will be seen at various points in the arrangements which follow.
Let us begin with one of the simplest melodic forms, the first five notes of the C major scale and its basic chordings. Here is the simplest form of a left hand solo arrangement, melody and accompaniment combined in such a way that there is no shifting of the hand:

In 3/4 the following arrangement suggests itself And now a regular waltz

Left Hand - Right Foot  1961 (Summy-Birchard)

Felix de Cola also made arrangements for the left hand of the following three composers works:

Beethoven: Menuet i G  1967

Chopin: Preludes in A major op. 28 no. and C minor  1967

Lehár: Waltz from The Merry Widow  1967

Thanks to Felix de Cola's son, Lee de Cola for picture and information

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C. C. Dean  American pianist and composer

Born: ?

Il Penseroso, op 45, nr. 16 (an arrangement from Stephen Heller) (Clayton E. Summy Co. 1916)
A fairly efficient arrangement - not too difficult - in a moderate tempo (Andantino).

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Born: Braila, 16.03.1967

Dediu graduated in composition at the Academy of Music in Bucharest in 1989, where his teachers were Stefan Niculescu, Dan Constantinescu, Dan Buciu, and Octavian Nemescu. Later he attended post-graduate courses with Francis Burt, Günter Kahowez and Wilhelm Zobl at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna from 1990 to 1991 and finally getting his PhD at the National University of Music in Bucharest in 1995 (with the thesis Phenomenology of the Composition. Archetypus, Archetropus and Ornament in Composition).
Dediu won Scholar- and Fellowships offered by Alfred-Töpffer Foundation, Hamburg, Alban-Berg Foundation, Vienna, New Europe College, Bucharest, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
Dediu has won first prizes in the National Composers Competition in Cluj-Napoca (1986, 1988), the Brass Chamber Music Competition in Budapest-Barcs (1990) and the Premier Concours pour Orchestre Françaises de Flûtes (2000, for Spaima).
Other honors include the George Enescu Prize in the George Enescu Competition in Bucharest (1991, for Symphony No. 1) and the Music Prize of the Romanian Academy (1991, for String Quartet No. 3). From the Romanian Composers Union, he earned the Prize for Chamber Music (1992, for Hörner-Stimmen aus einem unbekannten Requiem), the Prize for Symphonic Music (1995, for Hyperkardia), the prizes for opera (Post-Fiction) and musicology (with his wife, Valentina Sandu-Dediu) (1998), and the Prize for Choral Music (1999, for Stabat Mater).
Since 1999 Dediu is Associate Professor for composition at University of Music in Bucharest and since 2000 leads the Composition Department.
His output covers all fields but his chamber music is perhaps the most important.

Cosaşul (Grasshopper) op. 112  (2005) (MS)
Premiered at the Cluj Music Academy Romania on September 26, 2005, by Albert Sassmann to whom the work is dedicated.

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Imelda Delgado American pianist, writer and composer

Imelda Delgado earned her master’s degree in piano performance (1960) at Indiana University while studying with Sidney Foster. In addition, she was awarded the coveted Performer’s Certificate for her master’s piano recital. In 1973, the Ford Foundation awarded her a two-year graduate grant to earn her doctorate (1975) at Indiana University, again with her mentor, Sidney Foster.
Her solo and chamber music performances have been in the United States, England, Mexico, Switzerland, and Italy. She has held teaching positions at Del Mar College and Corpus Christi State University (currently Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi), the University of Vermont in Burlington, Stephens College in Columbia, MO, and a one-semester guest artist teaching post at Baylor University in Waco, TX.
Currently, she performs as pianist with the Camerata del Sol Trio. Her recordings are in collaboration with flutist David Aguilar and oboist Evelyn McCarty.

December's Dance  1994  (Patterson)

Thanks to James Marchand for helpful information

Norman (Frank) Demuth  English composer and pianist

South Croydon, London, 15. July 1898 - Chichester, 21.04.1968

Demuth was pupil of Parratt and Dunhill at St. George's, Windsor and Royal College of Music. During WW I he joined the army but was invalided out and from 1917 he functioned as organist and later - from 1930 as professor in composition at Royal Academy of Music.
He was one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Music, New Music Society of which he served as secretary from 1936 to1939 when - at the outbreak of WW II - he joined the army again.
In the larger form he was more or less self-taught, but he has composed in all genres in a style close to César Franck and Albert Roussel only without a Gallic touch. Practically everything he wrote before 1937 was destroyed by himself.
Demuth received many honorary titles during his life - among these: Hon. R.A.M, Hon. A.R.C.M and the French Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneurs - but his music is hardly heard any more.

Piano concerto 1947 (MS)

Legend for piano and orchestra 1949 (MS)
Both of these works were composed for Paul Wittgenstein

Three Preludes for Paul Wittgenstein. (1947) (Octavian Society Press, 2005)
These pieces turned up in the Wittgenstein Archives now located in the Hong Kong University.

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M. D'Eprémesnil

Petite étude pour la main gauche seule  1923 (B. Roudanez, Paris)

Edmondo De Vecchi

Suite per la sola mano sinistra  1924 (La Matuziana, S. Remo)

John Michael Diack  English composer

Glasgow 06.06.1869 -? 1946

Diack was foremost a well known music editor and the manager of the publication department of Paterson Sons & Co., Glasgow, and author of several books of vocal exercises. He was also a well known composer in his day for his arrangements, many ballad-like songs for example to text by Tennyson like Come to me in my dreams and - most notably, the nursery rhymes (e.g., Sing a Song of Sixpence, Old Mother Hubbard and Little Jack Horner) set in the style of Georg Friedrich Handel. 
Diack also made revisions and arrangements like St. John's Passion (A selection) by Handel. 

The Laggard Left; Studies, Pianoforte Studies for the Left Hand  1939 (Patterson's Publications, London)

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Joseph Dichler  Austrian pianist and composer

Vienna, 11.07.1912  -  26.03.1993

Dichler was a pupil of Franz Schmidt. He formed a piano-duo with his wife Grete.

I don't know about Dichler. Obvious a rather recluse person, who did not want to write about himself. As a matter of fact I wrote a pupil of his here in Denmark and he he did not answer at all - maybee it is addictive! But Dichler writes:
I was born - alas - before unthinkable times And in Vienna where I worked and lived. So - I am a true Wiener and thus musik would be my

Selbstdarstellung:

Mache ich eigentlich nicht gerne. Also: ich wurde geboren, leider schon vor undenklichen Zeiten, und zwar in Wien, wo ich auch immer lebte und arbeitete. Ich bin also ein echter Wiener und deshalb auch noch nicht untergegangen. Seit meiner frühesten Jugend stand für mich fest, daß Musik mein Beruf sein würde. Ich weiß allerdings nicht, ob das auch so gewesen wäre, wenn ich damals nur die Musik gekannt hätte, die man heutzutage als zeitgenössisch bezeichnet. Meine Liebe galt vor allem dem Klavier, und ich fühle mich auch gar nicht so sehr als Komponist, sondern mehr als ein "Klaviermensch" und habe meine ganze Arbeit da hineingesteckt, als Lehrer und Spieler (Konzerte,

	Joseph Dichler

 Rundfunk, Schallplatten etc.). So war es nicht zu verhindern, daß ich auch "Professor" wurde, was mich aber weiter nicht kränkte, weil das bekanntlich in Österreich jedem passieren kann. Als Komponist war meine Idee: nur Sachen zu machen, die auch wirklich gebraucht werden - meistens auch bestellt und dann viel gespielt wurden. Um es ganz profan auszudrücken: ich wollte keine schönen Ritterrüstungen fabrizieren, sondern gut greifende Autoreifen, und ich habe daher auch Besetzungen vorgezogen, die von den großen Tonsetzern stiefmütterlich behandelt worden waren (z.B. Stücke für Flöte, Gitarre und Kontrabaß). Besonderes Interesse hatte ich an der Musik für 2 Klaviere oder Klavier vierhändig.
Ich danke hiermit allen, welche dieses Geschreibsel lesen und belächeln.
Wien, im Mai 1989
 

Intermezzo and Capriccio  1980 (Doblinger)
Even if Dichler's style is tonal with a dash of jazz he calls for clusters with fist and even arm and in the capriccio - which is a polonaise-like piece - he quotes both Rachmaninoff and Chopin.

Photo: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv http://www.bildarchiv.at

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Edward B. Dickinson

West Springfield, Massachusetts, 10.10.1853 - Oberlin, Lorain County, Ohio, 25.01.1946

Author, Musician. He received his postgraduate degree from Amherst College in 1881. After completing his studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts and as a Bach Scholar under the direction of Philipp Spitta in Berlin, Germany, he lectured at the University of Berlin for three years. In 1893, Dickinson came to the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and began teaching classes in music history and appreciation. As there were no standard texts available for use in...[Read More] (Bio by: Law-Miller Roots)
Westwood Cemetery, Oberlin, Lorain County, Ohio, USA

Dickinson was a graduate of the Amherst College in 1876-1881, After he studied music at the New England Conservatory,  with Whitney Eugene Thayer (1838-1889) in Boston and after traveling to Europe he studied as a Bach Scholar under the direction of Philipp Spitta, and lectured at the University of Berlin.  He also studied  from 1893 for three years with Karl Klindworth (1830-1916) and Friedrich Wilhelm Langhans (1832-1892)  both in Berlin.
During the seven years from 1872 to 1879 he acted as organist at Springfield, Massachusetts but went to New York in the same capacity at Elmira from 1879 to 1885, being Music Director of Elmira College from 1883 to 1892. 
From 1893 to 1922 he was professor at Oberlin College and Conservatory in Ohio, where he specialized in developing a new of instruction in the history and philosophy of music. He received a degree of D. Litt. in 1911 from the Oberlin College. His publications about music include History of Music in the Western Church (1902),  The Study of History of Music (1905), The Education of the Music Lover (1911), Music and the Higher Education (1915) and The Spirit of Music (1925).

Kathleen Mavourneen op 15  1881 (Slade)

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Natalie Davenport

Two piano pieces for the left hand (Romanze in C and Waltz in D)  1906 (Ashdown, London)

Natalie Davenport

Two piano pieces for the left hand (Romanze in C and Waltz in D)  1906 (Ashdown, London)

Natalie Davenport

Two piano pieces for the left hand (Romanze in C and Waltz in D)  1906 (Ashdown, London)

Violeta Dinescu

Born Bucharest, 13.06.1953

She graduated from the Gheorghe Lazar Lyceum in Bucharest in 1972, studied composition with Myriam Marbe at the Conservatory Ciprian Porumbescu in  Bucharest from 1972-78 (receiving a one-year study of composition in 1977-78) and subsequently had two years of musicology studies in  Heidelberg. Her teaching activities began at the George Enescu Music  School from 1978-82 where after she moved to Germany to teach at the Hochschule für Kirchenmusik in Heidelberg from 1986-91 and the Hochschule  für Musik in Frankfurt from 1989-91. Her other teaching activities were concentrated around Fachakademie Hochschule für Kirchenmusik in Bayreuth from 1990-94 and guest appearances in USA, South Africa and finally she was in 1996 appointed  professor for applied composition at the Carl-von-Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg

Among the rewards earned by her are four Romanian Composers Union awards  (1975-76, 1980, First Prize at the International Competition for Composers,  (Utah, 1983), a third Prize at the G.B. Viotti International Music and  Dance  (no dance) Competition (1983) and  the Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Preis for her opera,  Hunger und Durst (1985), Baldreit Preis Baden-Baden for the music for the silent film TABU  (1929/30) from Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau  (1988), Johann-Vaillant Kompositionspreis 2010.

She has been a member of the Romanian Composers Union since 1980 and an executive board member of the International League of Women Composers since 1985.

Her œvre includes works for the stage (ballets and operas), orchestral pieces and a host of chamber music, choral works, vocal pieces and works for solo instruments (from flute to the double bass ) many of which have been recorded.  She has received commissions from well-known festivals, for example the Donaueschinger Musiktage, and the Schwetzinger Festspiele.

The sources for Dinescu’s works are Romanian folk music, and Byzantine church music .

Sometimes she handles the singing voice like a musical instrument and combines typical materials from Eastern Europe with techniques of the  avant-garde. She uses athematical principles of construction:  "Mathematical models play, however, a restricted role, restricted in a manner that they do not hinder an effectual creativity".

Tanggol for piano left hand (2007)

Written for the Korean pianist, professor Yoo-Kyung Han (born: Seoul, South Korea) and dedicated to her.  About Tanggol professor Dinescu has written:

The word Tanggol has several meanings: a landscape, a concentrated energy  for the discovery of space, and a card-game from Eastern Asia. The origin of the word is Philippine; tanggol´ol means defense or protection, and magtanggol means "defend your country!" By defining the word also as: imaginary landscapes, Violeta Dinescu pays homage to the five pieces so named by John Cage. Regardless how real or imagined those landscapes might be, she provides a compass to the pianist fond of travelling, but denies him the map. Tanggol is written partly in traditional notation and some of the stems of the notes do not have heads - no exact pitch is given. Sometimes a figure is noted once, and may be continued ad libitum as a background voice. For those parts, the composer needs four systems of notes, two of them for the middle voice, which is indicated by a sinuous line. This manner of notation reminds one of controlled aleatoric music, which can be found for example in the works of Witold Lutosławski. However, in Tanggol there are exact instructions for unusual articulations, such as perlato (like pearls). The dynamics range from pppp to ffffff, which is surely a challenge for playing with only the left-hand.

	The final page of Dinescu's Tanggol for the Left Hand By kind permission of the composer

The spatial aspect of the notation (four systems of notes) has a special character of an imaginary drama. Four different characters are playing. The dramaturgy of this imaginary play is not exactly defined, it is like having access to a piece of life concentrated in a source...Acting like this demonstrates that the unique source (only one interpret and only one hand) of information could give a large spectrum of expression and  that is similar to the infinite richness of the  soul space---so we could  define this piece like a psycho gram which could become every time different, depending of the musicians of the atmosphere of the space  where the musician is playing of the decisions he/she has to have in order to find the  good interpretation depending of the room (public atmosphere, but also acoustics)

not to forget about the feeling of the moment...etc.in a way it is really like a piece written once and interrelated infinitely different. The differences are between the limits of the notation. It is possible to follow exactly the details (they are very special) of the score, it is also possible to imagine the score like an imaginary carpet or parquet where it is possible to DANCE.

It is not possible to make a pirouette identically twice !

Natalie Davenport

Two piano pieces for the left hand (Romanze in C and Waltz in D)  1906 (Ashdown, London)

Theodor Döhler  Austrian pianist and composer

Naples, 20.04.1814 - Florence, 21.02.1856

As a child prodigy his education was entrusted to Julius Benedict who was resident of Naples at the time. In 1829 he was sent on to Carl Czerny in Vienna for further studies and here he remained until 1834 when he started touring most of Europe: Naples, Paris, Holland, Denmark, Poland and Russia as a very successful and indeed fashionable piano virtuoso.
Due to the influence of his patron - the Duke of Lucca - he was raised to noble ranks and thus he could marry a Russian Princess in 1846. After this he gave up public playing and settled first in Moscow and from 1848 in Naples composing piano pieces and a single opera: Tancreda which was first produced 24 years after his death.

Andante für Klavier linke-Hand Op.42 No.33

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Ernst von (Ernö) Dohnányi  Hungarian piano virtuoso, conductor and composer

Poszoni (Pressburg), 27.07.1877 - New York, 11.02.1960

Dohnányi was a contemporary of both Bartók and Kodály - but unlike them he remained a late romantic and during most of his life his was primarily regarded - not as a composer but as a piano virtuoso. 

Dohnányi has also published a piano school in which you will find wickedly-simple-looking exercises that are most rewarding.

Fugue D minor (For one advanced left hand or two unadvanced hands)  1913 (Associated)

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(Domenico) Gaetano (Maria) Donizetti  Italian composer

Bergamo, 29.11.1797 - Bergamo, 08.04.1848)

Donizetti was educated at the Istituto Musicale of Bergamo from where he went on to Liceo Filarmonico of Bologna before returning to his native Bergamo. 
In the beginning he devoted much time to instrumental music - composing string quartets, concert pieces and symphonies by the dozens - but his first attempts  with opera were unsuccessful. Then - in 1818 his Enrico di Borgogna was produced in Venice with great success and now some 70 odd operas followed - being given in Venice, Rome and Naples and in 1830 Donizetti obtained international recognition with Anna Bolena.
His operatic tunes were used again and again by pianist for paraphrases, fantasies and variations and are therefore known to many who have never heard any of his operas. 

The only photograph of Donizetti - taken shortly 
before his death at the age of 50 and with his 
nephew. By this time he was subject to 
melancholy bordering on insanity and 
generally paralyzed.

(The Sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor) Arranged by  Kunkel,  Leschetizky,  Orem,  Perny,  Romano,     

(Fra poco a me ricovero from Lucia di Lammermoor) See Fumagalli 

(Enrico's Serenade from Don Pasquale) Arranged by Sidney Smith,  

(Ange si pur from La Favorita) Arranged by  Durand de Grau,  

The Leschetizky arrangement is recorded by Peter Ritzen: Marco Polo 8.223525

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Natalie Davenport

Two piano pieces for the left hand (Romanze in C and Waltz in D)  1906 (Ashdown, London)

William Dopmann  

Born: ?

Teaches at the University of Texas

Distances from a Remembered Ground; Fantasy variations on the Last Mazurka of Chopin  (1982) (Gunmer Music)
Written for Leon Fleisher - this piece requires a left-hand player on the stage and an off-stage piano on tape.

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Zak, Bohemia, 15.10.1818 - Venice, 01.04.1869

Perhaps Dreyschock had the most phenomenal left hand in the history of music; Schumann once said: This man has no left hand - he has two right hands.  Dreyschock's most flamboyant feat even provoked Liszt. Apparently Dreyschock's teacher, Tomášek, had one day prophesied that some day in the future, some virtuoso would be able to play the left-hand part of Chopin's Etude Op 10 No 12 (the so-called Revolutionary Etude) in octaves instead of single notes. Challenged by this heady vision, Dreyschock went home and practiced twelve hours a day for six weeks. At the end of it all he was able to perform the Revolutionary study at speed in the prescribed octaves. 

	Johann Wenzel Tomášek 17.04.1774 - 02.06.1850

It astonished Mendelssohn when he heard it at the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts, and it obviously made Liszt sweat a little when Dreyschock began to usurp his Viennese audience. At his next Viennese concert, Liszt purled through Chopin's Etude in F minor, Op 25 No 2. After the rapturous applause, he repeated the first bar slowly and tentatively - in octaves. Then again, a little faster. Then he really sped up and whisked the entire etude into an octave soufflé. Liszt remained King in Vienna, but the tyrannical and  often all too intellectual Hans von Bülow couldn't compete with Dreyschock's success there. He called Dreyschock's event a got-up furore, and called the left-hand wizard as an homme-machine (a mechanical machine), the personification of lack of genius, with the exterior of a clown. But never the less Dreyschock's tricks ensured him a place in the history books - and a large fee-paying public during his lifetime.
And indeed the God Save the Queen variations demand a left hand with quite extraordinary speed and precision. 

When the Danish poet Hans Christian Andersen heard Dreyschock play in Copenhagen he wrote a poem in his honor: He - like a ruler, commands over the strings.
Andersen had probably heard Dreyschock at a concert in 1856. The concert had been a great success and afterwards the Danish king Frederik VII had presented Dreyschock with a box of cigars wrapped in bank notes. On 6th June Andersen was lucky to share compartment with Dreyschock on the train to Korsør before boarding the ferry to Kiel in Germany - where they were both going (Andersen was a compulsive traveler and has given a wonderful description of how the train passengers were pressed down in their seats at the maddening speed of 35 kilometers per hour - but compulsive - yes - his motto was: To travel is to live). 

	Hans Christian Andersen 02.04.1805 - 04.08.1875

Andersen's poem in Danish

The first part of the poem is the one that probably comes closest to the truth - but the last line is certainly not one reflected in what we know from other sources: Dreyschock was simply known as a piano-pounder beyond anything that was heard before. 
The great German poet Heinrich Heine said that if Dreyschock played in Munich and the wind was right - you could hear him in Paris and after Dreyschock's Paris debut Heine played with the German meaning of his name: You don't hear one pianist but  drei Schock (three-score) - liable to burst an eardrum or two.
Bur Dreyschock was rightfully proud of his unique octaves and he would thunder them out. But - then again - even Mendelssohn confessed that some times Dreyschock did  manage to play so beautifully that you fancied yourself in the presence of a great artist.
In fact Dreyschock's family included several artists: his brother Raimund Dreyschock was a virtuoso violinist and his uncle, Felix Dreyschock (1860-1906) was a pianist and much respected piano teacher in Leipzig. 

	Raymond Dreyschock (1824-1869)

At Dreyschock's first court appearance in Vienna he played before the emperor Franz Joseph in a very hot room, with closed windows. Dreyschock began to perspire. The emperor listened intently and watched him even more closely. When the pianist got up and faced the emperor, he was afraid to wipe his face. The emperor then approached him.  My dear Dreyschock, I have heard Moscheles play. Dreyschock bowed. 'I have heard Thalberg. Dreyschock bowed even lower. I have heard Liszt. Dreyschock now bowed very low indeed. I have heard all the great players. But I never, never, ever saw anybody perspire as you do.

Variationen op. 22  1843 (Schlesinger)

Grand Variation on God Save the Queen  c.1852  (André)

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Percival Driver  English composer

(1818 - 1869)

Driver is today best remembered for his light music - his Three little Trios which were entitled The Song of the Clock, Harvesting Time and Slumber Song and they are still being played. Among his other instrumental works are Dainty Dance for violin and piano, the piano piece All-in-a-Ring (four movements: 1936),and Four Sketches (1926). Driver's ability to write in 'old style' is often displayed - as in An Old Style Measure, Three Dance Measures (Gavotte, Sarabande and Passepied) and a Little Suite (Prelude, Sarabande and Gigue). 
His Perhaps most important work is Variations on an Original Theme for two pianos, but - alas - his music is by now slipping into oblivion and very few play it anymore.

Single Handed Pieces (4 books) (Boosey & Hawkes)

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Earl Richard Drummer Sr.

X    X

Auguste Dupont   Belgian pianist and composer

Ensival nr. Liège, 09.02.1827 - Brussels, 17.12.1890

He had his education at the Liège Conservatory with Jalhau as his prime teacher and after several years of successful touring as a concert pianist he was appointed professor at the Brussels Conservatory in 1850.
His works are mainly for the piano: A concerto and a concert piece are the most ambitious and among the solo works are Roman en dix pages (Novel in 10 pages) op. 48 and Contes de foyer op. 12, all more or less inspired by Robert Schumann.

(Fantasy and fugue op. 41)  (Schott)
According to some sources this is in fact a work for the right hand.

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Natalie Davenport

Two piano pieces for the left hand (Romanze in C and Waltz in D)  1906 (Ashdown, London)

Natalie Davenport

Two piano pieces for the left hand (Romanze in C and Waltz in D)  1906 (Ashdown, London)