[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YD6uu7dJ7I[/youtube]
Mauricio Kagel‘s 1984 “Der Eid des Hippokrates” (“The Hippocratic Oath”), for piano 3-hands. Kagel wrote:
This aphoristic composition was inspired by the publication in January 1984, in a medical magazine, of an article on my latest work. Whiling away the time in hospital waiting rooms, I began to think about the generous Hippocratic oath. I could not say if it was because I was wondering about the influence this Greek practitioner had — but there I was, writing a piece for two left hands, while also calling on the right hand [….] One hand keeps on providing a muted drumming, on a corner of the piano, as if transmitting extracts from the early oath in Morse code: “I swear by the doctors Apollo, Aesculapius, Hygieia and Panacea, by all the gods and the goddesses…”
The players here are András Hamary, Markus Bellheimand Armin Fuch, from a 2008 concert.