CARL CZERNY (1791-1857)
Austrian Pianist and Composer

Who among us does not cringe at the very mention of Carl Czerny? Who has not been bored to distraction for hours at a time playing his mind numbing exercises for the piano? And who has not suffered the pain of forcing his fingers to move faster and faster in myriad ways unintended by nature?

And yet, he was in fact a capable composer, strongly influenced by Beethoven, and his music represents one of the missing links between the classical and romantic pianistic styles. I say missing because his works, like those of many of the major composers of the transition era bridging classicism and romanticism, are virtually unknown today leaving one with an unsettling sense of "... and then there was Beethoven, and suddenly there were Chopin and Schumann and Liszt." as though these musical geniuses somehow appeared, uninfluenced, out of the ether.

Carl Czerny's music, as you will hear, was not of the first rank. It is well crafted music, charming, with occasional touches of brilliance, but harmonically unimginitive and as such sounds dated, while music that was being composed at the same time by Beethoven and Schubert sounds ground-breaking. I find his "Figaro fantasy delightful.  This fantasy and the Op 14 variations are performed below by the brilliant pianists, Cyprien Katsaris and Stephen Hough, respectively. And the Rode Variations are lots of fun, particularly under the hands of a master pianist like Vladimir Horowitz who makes magic with every trill.

I will have to explore more closely, but I suspect his chamber music is perhaps more successful.  Give the Nonet a listen.

Musically, you will hear the influence of Beethoven and many similarities to Schubert. Essentially, his music comes across as unsatisfying, Beethoven and Schubert without the genius, but there are hints of Mendelssohn to come that are delicious. 

Pianistically, as the teacher of Theodor Leschetizky, Stephen Heller, Sigismond Thalberg, and of course, Franz Liszt, Czerny is the ancestor of of all the greater and lesser piano virtuosi of the first half of the 19th century.

It is interesting to note that in the first two piano sonatas, Carl Czerny adds a fifth movement, a fugue, as a look backwards to the roots of classicism. The first Sonata predates Beethoven's use of the Fugue in his piano sonatas but the second was written after Beethoven's Hammerklavier with the magnificent fugue in the final movement. Can it be that Czerny inspired Beethoven's use of this ultimate in contrapuntal textures in the latter's works in sonata form?

Complete Nocturnes
8 Nocturnes, Op 368 - 16 Nocturnes, Op 604 - Nocturne in E♭ major, Op 647

Isabelle Oehmichen, piano