Clementi: Gradus ad Parnassum

Muzio Clementi occupies a unique place in the history of the piano, with his myriad sonatas pushing the traditional classical boundaries of the form, his publishing company and piano manufacturing firm prospering both in England and on the Continent, and his famed virtuosity astonishing all who heard him. Remembered as the first of the great piano virtuosos, Clementi condensed his years of composition and performance into the monumental, three-volume Gradus ad Parnassum, a repository of stylistically diverse pieces designed to demonstrate utmost technical mastery of the instrument. This is the last disc in Alessandro Marangoni’s highly acclaimed four single disc survey.

Aspiring to Parnassus, the mythological mountain home of the Muses, Jean Rondeau explores the possibilities of the harpsichord in music composed over more than 400 years – much of it for the piano. He pays tribute to the Austrian composer Johann Joseph Fux, who in 1725 published the original Gradus ad Parnassum, an influential treatise on counterpoint, and to Muzio Clementi, whose similarly titled collection of piano studies came a century later. The theme continues with Debussy’s Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum, an affectionate parody of Clementi from the Children’s Corner suite.

Aspiring to Parnassus, the mythological mountain home of the Muses, Jean Rondeau explores the possibilities of the harpsichord in music composed over more than 400 years – much of it for the piano. He pays tribute to the Austrian composer Johann Joseph Fux, who in 1725 published the original Gradus ad Parnassum, an influential treatise on counterpoint, and to Muzio Clementi, whose similarly titled collection of piano studies came a century later. The theme continues with Debussy’s Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum, an affectionate parody of Clementi from the Children’s Corner suite.

The compositional stature of Muzio Clementi has never really been fully acknowledged. Most people get to know his music through those sonatinas we all had to plough through when we were kids – but we didn't notice then that Clementi was one of history's foremost teachers of the piano: his pupils included Field, Cramer, Moscheles, Kalkbrenner and Meyerbeer, and Nicolas Slonimsky calls his Gradus ad Parnassum a "great book of études". The adjective is not one that Slonimsky bandies around easily. Now we find that he was also one of the outstanding symphonists of his generation.

It may surprise you to learn that, despite his untouchable reputation with the public, Vladimir Horowitz enjoyed a certain dubious reputation with the critics. For many, he was the epitome of the witless virtuoso, all technique and vulgar display, and no brains. There was some truth in this to the extent that he really could be variable on record, but by general consensus his Masterworks recordings show him at his absolute best.