The Left Hand Voicings Graphic Piano Book: Teoria, Grafiche e

These strong, stylish, intelligently mapped-out, and excellently engineered interpretations of Brahms' complete solo-piano variation sets find pianist Garrick Ohlsson on peak technical and musical form. The impetuous fervor and tempo extremes that characterized his 1977 EMI release of the Handel and Paganini variation sets have given way to steadier, better integrated tempos and an altogether stronger linear awareness that yields greater textural diversity and color without sacrificing power and mass. What is more, ear-catching rubatos, voicings, and articulations are borne out of what's in the score.

Although the Concertos for Piano (left hand) by Korngold, Prokofiev, Ravel and others may be better known, it was Josef Labor who marked the beginning of the genre in 1915 with his first Konzertstück for Piano (left hand) and Orchestra. It was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in Russia during the First World War, but was determined that his career should progress nonetheless. Labor was part of Johannes Brahms’ close circle of friends who, at the age of three, had lost his sight due to smallpox. Composition was a luxury for him, in that he had to rely on the help of an amanuensis to commit his works to paper. Labor’s music is very skillfully composed, always sensuous and, above all, melodious. These world premiere recordings represent a high-point in Capriccio's Labor-Edition, which for a number of years has been spotlighting the sensitive music of this largely forgotten composer.

It’s good to have Richard Strauss’ fascinating, somewhat atypical concerted works for piano left hand available on a single disc, especially in well played and strongly projected readings like these. At times the slow-motion harmonic scansion and rhapsodic piano writing throughout the Paregon to the Symphonia Domestica evoke Scriabin’s misty muse. By contrast the Panathenäenzug, subtitled Symphonic Etudes in the form of a passacaglia, uses a time-honored baroque form to generate opulently scored, post-Wagnerian froth.

Left Hand Piano Techniques
2 sections • 14 lectures • 1h 57m total length
2023-10 | e-Learning | English | MP4, PDF | 2.27 GB

Develop your dexterity in over a dozen styles!