In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister'': Technik und Ästhetik der Klaviermusik für die linke Hand allein

An answer to this question must grapple with the most essential issues concerning one-handed performance. In Sassmann's discussions of the history of left-hand piano music, we learn not only of the inventive developments in keyboard technique that this repertoire unleashed, but also of the various roles the repertoire has served: as a pedagogical tool for what is commonly thought of as the weaker of two hands, as a vehicle for flashy displays of virtuosity (in which the driving principal seems to be that "doing more with less" is somehow "better"; see the works of the nineteenth-century pianist Adolfo Fuma - galli); as an outlet for creativity and in - novation (as in Johannes Brahms's lefthand arrangement of Bach's Chaconne in D Minor); and, most importantly, as an accommodation for pianists who temporarily or permanently lose the use of their right hand-an injury common especially during World Wars I and II.\n Finally, mention should be made of Sassmann's catalogue of one-hand piano music, which consumes nearly one-fourth of the book's total number of pages. [...] it includes a number of intriguing titles: the many unpublished one-hand arrangements of wellknown two-hand piano works, completed by one of the twentieth century's most important left-hand pianists, Cor de Groot (1914-1993); a recent flurry of colorfully titled compositions and arrangements by James Marchand, Maurice Karkoff, Frédéric Meinders, and Raoul Sosa (all from the past decade); and a concerto by Canadian composer François Morel, with a title that sparks the imagination (especially in light of Sassmann's aesthetics and Bolcom's Gaea): Les récifs du rêve: