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CHALLENGE, CONFRONTATION, COGNITION
"In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister": Technik und Ästhetik der Klaviermusik für die linke Hand allein. By Albert Sassmann. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 2010. [360 p. ISBN 9783795212964. i48.] Music examples, portraits, bibliography, catalog.
With the recent auction of the formerly inaccessible Paul Wittgenstein Archive, with an increasing number of one-hand pianists now sustaining successful concert careers, and with more American musicologists interested in the intersections between music and disability, the once-marginalized repertoire of one-hand piano music is now ripe for historical and critical scrutiny. This monograph, by the Austrian pianist Albert Sassmann, is an important contribution to the topic. Sassmann divides his study into four main sections: (1) a long-range history of the left hand's role in piano music, culminating in the cultivation of the lefthand- only piano repertoire by pianists Leopold Godowsky, Géza Zichy, Paul Wittgenstein, Otakar Hollmann, and others; (2) a consideration of one-hand performance practice and technique; (3) an "aesthetics" of one-hand performance, meditating on the reasons why many composers are drawn to this medium; and (4) a large, ninety-page catalog of piano repertoire written for the left hand alone. Generously illustrated with over two hundred music examples, and written in straightforward German prose, Sassmann's study has the potential to appeal to a diverse audience, including primarily the students and faculty of graduate programs in piano performance and composition. (Several fine Ph.D. and D.M.A. dissertations anticipate Sassmann's topic, including So Young Kim-Park, Paul Wittgenstein und die für ihn komponierten Klavierkonzerte für die linke Hand [Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 1999] and Won-Young Kong, "Paul Wittgenstein's Transcriptions for Left Hand" [D.M.A. diss., University of North Texas, 1999]). Sassmann's monograph paves the way for future doctoral students in piano performance to embark on similar studies.
In his title, Sassmann quotes from the penultimate line of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem "Natur und Kunst": "In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister," or, "mastery reveals itself in limitation." (Sassmann stops there, but Goethe closes his famous sonnet with an equally relevant formula: "Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben," or, "only law can give us freedom.") This conception of artistic achievement and expressive freedom- as predicated on rules, limitation, Beschränkung-is a trope that composers of one-hand piano music repeatedly invoke. Sassmann...