Ludwig Van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany on December 16, 1770. Although later in his life, Beethoven became deaf, no composer left a clearer and more connected story of his life and music. Many of his works stretched over a forty year period. When he could no longer hear the sounds around him, he listened to a voice within to continue his marvelous musical works.

Johannes Brahms was born on May 7, 1833 in Hamburg, Germany. To help support his family, Brahms played the piano in waterfront dives and bordellos. As a youth he was considered handsome, because of his slim figure, and blue eyes. As he aged, he became heavy-set and grew an enormous beard. He hated to buy clothes and often wore patched trousers and was constantly sloppy in his appearance. Brahms composed various works for piano, clarinet, and orchestra.
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Frederic Chopin was born at Zelazowa Wola, a small village near Warsaw, Poland on February 22, 1810. At six years of age his sister Louise became his first music instructor. Many believed Chopin's natural musical gifts rivaled those of Mozart. At the age of sixteen he entered the Warsaw Conservatory under the guidance of Joseph Elsner and graduated in three years. Many artists of the period, such as Liszt, Paganini and Schumann hailed him as a genius. Chopin often preferred to give recitals in intimate settings, rather than in concert halls. During his lifetime, Chopin composed over 200 piano compositions. Few artists were complete without the performance of his compositions.

Chopin's works are performed more frequently today than his contemporaries'. Chopin is clearly one of the great romantic composers. His innovations in pedaling, fingering and introduction of new elements in the style of piano playing, raised the art of piano performance to a new pinnacle.

Chopin often preferred to give recitals in intimate settings, rather than in concert halls. During Chopin life, many consider him not only a revolutionary or visionary in is music, but also in his political views. During the occupation of his homeland he often composed music to represent freedom from oppression and tried to interpret freedom thru his music. His Polonaise in A Flat is an example of that symbolism and many polish people at that time through of it as a National anthem. During the World War II, his music was banned and his monument in Warsaw pulled down in Poland because Germany felt his music did symbolize freedom and revolution for the polish people.

Claude Debussy was born August 22,1862 in France. His harmonic and melodic innovations gave pianists more to think about than any other composer since Chopin. Debussy is considered the greatest of the musical impressionists. Like a painter, Debussy developed new theories in musical tone and sound. He always tried to capture an impression or mood for the listener in his music. He strongly believed that music should not be cast into a traditional and fixed form. He used and developed unique new sounds, pedaling, and rhythms for the piano. Many of his works had a single idea, and followed no traditional rule. Often his chords did not resolve, and much of his music was exotic- sounding.
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Enrique Granados was born in July 27, 1867 and began to study music at an early age and studied piano in Barcelona. In 1887 he moved to Paris to study and meet some of the most important French composers of the time: Faure, Debussy, Ravel, Dukas, and established a very close relationship with Camille Saint-Saëns.

In 1889 he returned to Barcelona to begin his career as a performing virtuoso and composer. In 1901 he founded the Granados Academy, that was to become the hallmark of teaching the art of playing the piano as understood by Granados. Granados directed the Academy until his death, when it was taken over by his pupil and friend Frank Marshall. To solve inheritance problems after the sudden death of Granados, the decision was made by Marshall and the tutor of the Academy, Felipe Pedrell, to change the name to the Marshall Academy, those making Marshall the sole owner.

Granados and his wife Amparo drowned when the Sussex, the ship that they were on travelling from London to Barcelona (the last leg of their return trip from the successful premier of the opera Goyescas in New York) was torpedoed crossing the English Channel. Granados is often recognized as a nationalistic composer. Actually the term neo-romantic would be better as he developed a personal romantic style up until his time unknown in Spain. An expressive style influenced by Chopin, Schumann, Schubert and Grieg and the 18th century majas of Goya. He represents the romantic and poetic piano of 19th century Spain.

As a composer, Granados dedicated himself almost exclusively to the piano, as Chopin had done before him. Indeed, Chopin was a great hero to Granados. And there is some truth in calling Granados "the Spanish Chopin", for his music possesses a Chopinesque passion and tenderness, as well as some of the same virtuosity. Despite his cruel demise at an early age (all too often the fate of great composers, it seems), we at least can appreciate the works he was able to create in his lifetime, and marvel at what more he might have written.

George Gershwin was America's most famous composer was born into a Russian-Jewish family in Brooklyn. He first become interested in music at the age of ten and taught himself the rudiments of harmony and started to write popular songs of the day. He published his first song at the age of 18 and had his first big hit with "Swance" when he was 20. He became well known for his musical comedies while in New York.

At the age of 25 he made his first move into a larger musical forms, when his famous Rhapsody in Blue was presented at the Aeolian Hall by Paul Whiteman in 19-24. With the collaboration of his brilliant brother, who was a lyricist, he contributed endless classics of popular songs to the field of Hollywood musical films. Greatest achievement was his Piano Concerto in F and other orchestral works.
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Franz Liszt was born on October 22, 1811 in Hungary. There is probably no more contradictory, picturesque or complicated figure in music history than Liszt. He was a rebel who rejected the established ideas and ways of his time. Liszt was also a traveling pianist, who composed music to reflect the mood and characteristics of the country he visited. Liszt was also a deep religious Catholic who wrote numerous sacred pieces. He was the greatest piano virtuoso of his day, and prolific composer who wrote over 700 works of music. He was a renowned performer throughout Europe during the 19th century, noted especially for his showmanship and great skill with the keyboard. Today, he is generally considered to be one of the greatest pianists who ever lived, despite the fact that no recordings of his playing exist.

Liszt studied and played at Vienna and Paris and for most of his early adulthood toured throughout Europe giving concerts. He is credited with inventing the modern piano recital, where his virtuosity won him approval by composers and performers alike. His great generosity with both time and money benefited the lives of many people: victims of disasters, orphans and the many students he taught for free. His piano compositions include works such as the Hungarian Rhapsodies, his Piano Sonata in B minor, and two piano concertos, which have entered the standard repertoire. He also made many exuberant piano transcriptions of operas, famous symphonies, Paganini Caprices, and Schubert Lieder. Many of his piano compositions are among the most technically challenging in the repertoire.

His music is well loved in part because of its melodic and emotional harmonies. He would often add a few pages of flamboyance to his music to impress the young women. He deeply loved women and wrote many love songs for them. The only pianist who has recorded his entire pianistic oeuvre is the Australian Leslie Howard. The project took almost 15 years to complete, and comprised 95 full-length CDs. Howard was awarded a place in the Guinness Book of Records for having completed the largest recording project ever in the history of music (including both pop and classical). It was Liszt who elevated the piano to its status today, and who demonstrated that a satisfying concert can be given by the piano alone. He was the first and true inventor of impressionism and atonal music, well before Debussy and Schoenberg.

Piano Recital
The term "recital" was first used by Liszt at his concert in 1840, and this model is still followed by performing artists to this day. Liszt's recitals traversed the European continent from the Urals to Ireland. He would often play before as many as three thousand people. He was the first solo pianist to play entire programmes from memory, and the first to play with the piano at right angles to the platform, with its lid open, reflecting sound across the auditorium. Liszt also had prefer pitch and could hear some play a piece and play it back in its entirety. Many of his compositions use single one line notes as dramatic effects to represent one voice singing.

Federico Mompou was born on April 16, 1893 in Barcelona, during the Catalan Renaissance of the arts that occurred during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he proved to be one of its mavericks. Mompou began his musical training at the Barcelona Conservatory, but in 1911, at age 18, he went to Paris to study piano. He never formally studied counterpoint or composition and consequently, he always rejected the title of "composer", and rarely followed the accepted structural or contrapuntal rules and theories of the time, choosing instead to rely on subjective personal inspiration. His musical output was almost all for the intimate expression of solo piano. After War II, Mompou moved back to Barcelona, where he lived quietly, and later married the Catalan pianist Carmen Bravo, for whom he composed his Paisajes (Landscapes). He remained in Barcelona until his death at age 94 on June 30,1987.

Mompou was very influenced by Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, and Satie (with which he is most compared). One can also hear influences of Chopin and Scriabin in his music. Mompou's music is highly personal and original, and instantly recognizable for its apparent childlike simplicity and gently dissonant harmonic flow and sublime melodicism. He avoided any unnecessary clutter or rambling in his music, preferring to condense the music down to its barest and purest of expressive means He ofter would spend weeks or even months over a single melody line or pharse.

Mompou often set traditional Catalan melodies, using his highly original harmonic language, and with some occasional jazzy rhythmic figures. Indeed, the harmonies were often quite jazzlike and seem to have been "ahead of their time". Such as his "Music Callada", which has a blend of classical and jazz elements. One can just sit back and take in the various layers of this deceptively simple music. Mompou also would take a melody line and repeat it several time and just end the piece. IN this way, he felt the listener could walk away and end or finish the piece base on their own life feeling and interpretation.

Mompou is like none other composer, and I personally feel that he is a composer who will become more and more popular as time goes on and more people discover his music, because here is modern music that possesses that most important of virtues in music: BEAUTY.

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Murice Ravel is frequently linked with that of Debussy. They were both French and made a significant and lasting contribution to music.Ravel was born in the Basque region of France. In 1989, Ravel entered the Paris Conservatoire to study piano. His first major work for piano was Pavane pour une infante. By 1914 Ravel reputation was second only to Debussy. He was a renowned for his piano playing and music criticism as well as his composing and was at the heart of music making in France. Ravel greatest success came in 1932 when he composed the famous work Bolero.

Serge Rachmaninoff was born in Oneg in Novgorud, Russia in 1873. At an early age his style of composition was original and brilliant. His compositions were rich in sound and tones. His 4 Piano Concertos are among the most played by pianist. He was known as the "Puritan Pianist" due to his close adherence to the printed note, uneccentric rhythms, and musical architecture. The Prelude in "C" Sharp minor Opus 3, No.2 was the piece that made him famous. Throughout his life he was continually asked to perform it at his concerts.

Alexander Scriabin, the noted Russian composer, was born on Christmas Day January 7, 1872 and died on April 14, 1915. No one was more famous during his lifetime, and few were more quickly ignored after his death. Although he was never absent from the mainstream of Russian music, the outside world neglected him until recently. Today, there is worldwide resurgence of interest in his music and ideas. Scriabin wrote a vast amount of music in a short period of time. Scriabin's hundreds of preludes, études and poems are considered masterpieces of 20th century pianism, and his style changed enormously as he progressed. The early pieces are romantic, fresh and easily accessible, while his later compositions explore harmony's further reaches.

Immediately upon Scriabin's sudden death, Sergei Rachmaninoff toured Russia in a series of all-Scriabin recitals. It was the first time he played music other than his own in public. In those days Scriabin was known as a pianist and Rachmaninoff was considered only as a composer. Scriabin's thought processes were immensely complicated, even tinged with solipsism. "I am God," he once wrote in one of his secret philosophical journals. His was fascinated his whole life with the concept of good vs evil (light vs dark) and many of his compositions reflect that fascination
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Pierre Sancanwas born in France in 1916 and is not very well known pianist-composer. He studied at the Meknès College of Music, Toulouse Conservatory and the Paris Conservatory. He won the Prix de Rome in 1943 and taught piano at the Paris Conservatory from 1956-1985. Sancan wrote three ballets, an opera and symphonic music as well as solo and chamber works.

The Caprice Romantique is his only composition for the Left Hand Alone and it is quite modern in its scope and composition.Camille Saint-Saëns was something of an anomaly among French composers of the nineteenth century in that he wrote in virtually all genres, including opera, symphonies, concertos, songs, sacred and secular choral music, solo piano, and chamber music.

Saint-Saënswas born in Paris on October 9, 1835 and started composing his first work at three. In 1848, he entered the Paris Conservatory and composition. By his early 20s, following the composition of two symphonies, he had won the admiration and support of Franz Liszt and other notable composers. He was generally not a pioneer, though he did help to revive some earlier and largely forgotten dance forms, like the bourée and gavotte. He was a conservative who wrote many popular scores scattered throughout the various genres of classical music. His opera Samson et Dalila, is probably his most widely performed work. He was also a poet and playwright of some distinction. In 1875, Saint-Saëns married and produced two children who died within six weeks of each other. His marriage ended in 1881, but this dark period in his life produced some of his most popular works He died in Algeria on December 16, 1921.
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Jenö Takács was born on September 25, 1902 in Siegendorf (Burgenland) Austria. The composer, who was trained at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, was privileged to enjoy the friendship of both Bela Bartók and Zoltan Kodály. The dean of Austrian composers at the astonishing age of 102, Takács has been associated at one time or another with many of the most prominent musicians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A prolific master of many forms and styles, the music of Takács is for the most part tonal, and tends to be richly colored by his lifelong study of the of the art and folk music of the many cultures that he has come to know firsthand. His use of Hungarian and gypsy idioms is an especially salient and ingratiating feature of his style. The creative intellect of Jenö Takács transcends both time and space, illuminating the presence of the past, bringing an expansive global dimension to musical culture, but always respectful of the great Austro-Hungarian traditions which continue to inform his art. He is one of the few modern composers to produce an innovative and complex work for Left Hand Alone.

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