Vladimir Horowitz - Clementi: Keyboard Sonatas

Beautiful Music

This CD by maestro Horowitz features four sonatas by the prolific, underrated and, frankly, underperformed composer Muzio Clementi (1752-1832). Anyone who appreciates solo piano works will enjoy this disc. Clementi was a contemporary of Beethoven (eighteen years his senior, actually), and while I wouldn't attempt a direct comparison between the two, his piano music is consistently excellent and very rewarding indeed. The playing time on this CD is a generous 72 minutes. Those looking for more piano music by Clementi would do well to explore Pietro Spada's complete set of Clementi piano works, an 18-disc set available either individually or as two 9-disc sets, on the Arts Music label. April 20, 2007

Important and unjustly neglected music by one of the greatest pianists

While Horowitz was certainly a great virtuoso and made his reputation with the big concerti and solo pieces that constitute the repertoire for a lion of the piano, he was also a maverick. His repertoire was not comprehensive. He did not play every major concerto or sonata. What he did play, he made his own. Then there is the repertoire he brought out that confounded the public. His early programming and recording the sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti generally caused a strong reaction in people (and in some ways his style of playing them still does). Some people thought them beneath a pianist of his stature. When the harpsichord started making a comeback and the idea of proper performance practice began to rise, people criticized his way of playing them too mannered. One person characterized them as the Mona Lisa redone in day-glo paints. Most of us find that we love the way Horowitz plays them as well as the way harpsichordists play them. We don't really have to choose between them.

As controversial as that was, when he started programming and recording Clementi sonatas, well, some people lost their minds. This was a completely neglected repertoire and it took a Horowitz to bring attention to its unjustified neglect. Horowitz made a statement by bringing these sonatas to public attention. He even claimed some of them to be on a par with Beethoven. While that is a bit of hyperbole, in the specific it has some real merit (I mean the Opus 49 sonatas?). Most people know Clementi through those sonatinas that every young pianist fumbles with and a few of the exercise of his "Gradus ad Parnassum". There is so much more to this important musician than this!

Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) was born in Rome, traveled the world, but made his life and fortune in London. His father was a goldsmith and a devoted amateur musician. He saw to his son's music education. Clementi went to England after a wealthy Englishman named Beckford, impressed with Clementi's playing, offered to see to his music training. In 1770, Clementi was a well equipped musician and took London and then all of Europe by storm. Later he settled down as a successful businessman including the manufacturing and sale of pianos.

Although you can hear Clementi as a skillful successor to Scarlatti (listen to the f-sharp minor sonata, Opus 26 No 2, included here), it is quite important to realize his role in the development of the virtuosic piano style (listen to the Sonata quasi Concerto, Opus 33 no 3 and first on this disk) and his contributions to the piano sonata as a form. He wrote more than 100 of them and they deserve more attention than they receive, even today.

Clementi was also an influential teacher. Among his students were Field, Cramer, Moscheles, Kalkbrenner, and Meyerbeer. Beethoven was fond of his compositions and you can hear hints of Beethoven in the g-minor sonata, Opus 34 No. 2, included here.

This is a fine disk to listen to for enjoyment, for your own musical education, and as an important document of a bold statement by one of the great pianists of history. February 1, 2006

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