Muzio Clementi

The choice of Olivier Cavé, a pianist of exquisite sensibility, falls precisely on four sonatas all in minor tonality, defined by the performer himself as “authentic dramas in music”. Dramas in a structural sense, certainly, constructed by following the complex aesthetic canons of their time, of which Clementi was a great connoisseur.

Lamar Crowson was most famous as pianist with the melos ensemble of London. The clementi sonatas, regularly studied by piano students, but now increasingly the province of repertoire at piano competitions and major recitals, is still very rare on CD. The two l'oiseau-lyre lps making up this 2 cd set have never before been issued on CD.

Our Contemporaries of Mozart series with Matthias Bamert for Chandos counts over 20 CDs to date and is still on-going. The series has uncovered a wealth of previously unavailable eighteenth-century works and its success is illustrated by the numerous accolades bestowed upon it including a number of releases credited with Editor’s Choice in Gramophone. Composers featured include those more well-known from the era, such as Clementi, Salieri and Stamitz to the rarely-heard Gossec, Vanhal and Gyrowetz.

Muzio Clementi’s four surviving mature symphonies were never published in his lifetime and were rescued from neglect through painstaking reconstruction. His sophisticated use of counterpoint can be heard in his treatment of the tune God Save the King in the third symphony. Classical poise, drama and eloquence of expression in both works can be traced to the influence of Haydn and Mozart. Muzio Clementi’s four mature symphonies have rarely been recorded in comparison to his works for piano.

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.