Physical and Digital Release: 18 July 2025
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There are few musicians whose works are played as frequently as Carl Czerny. There is probably no classically-trained pianist on earth who has not played several pieces penned by him. Probably, in terms of quantity, the average pianist has played more Czerny than, say, Schoenberg or Bartok. In spite of this, few musicians are as misunderstood as Czerny. His name has become synonymous with boredom, dryness, mere technique, mechanical playing. Which are not flattering qualities for a musician. Czerny’s blessing and his curse (and perhaps also those of many pianists) have been his countless studies and exercises, which bring a total beginner from the discovery of the white keys of the piano to a level of virtuosity allowing the performer to tackle the works of Franz Liszt – who was Czerny’s student. Undeniably, Czerny’s studies and exercises are highly useful, if they continue to be employed so diffusely two centuries after his lifetime. But they represent only one aspect of his personality. Their extremely high number makes of them an extraordinary repository for all piano teachers, but have also alienated from him the sympathies of many pupils. (And all pianists have been pupils!). The very fact that one of the pieces recorded here bears an opus number in the 800s underpins the extraordinary fecundity of Czerny’s pen and of his creativity: very few nineteenth-century musicians went beyond one or two hundred opus numbers, and he reached one thousand! Furthermore, Czerny was also very active as a teacher (and this should not surprise us) and as an author. His documents about the performance of Beethoven’s works are extremely interesting (even though perhaps not totally reliable), and his instructive edition of the Well-Tempered Clavier has influenced the reception of Bach to an extent which is almost unimaginable.
Yet, the figure of Czerny as a composer in his own right still requires its due assessment. Certainly, not all works published by him aim at a high artistic quality: this was not the purpose of his studies and exercises. But what can be said about the works which were actually conceived for the concert stage? The present recording is a valuable contribution to the rediscovery, appreciation, and fair understanding of this figure, mistreated by posterity.
Czerny was born in Vienna in 1791, the place and year of Mozart’s death. His first musical education took place under the wings of his father, who was a multi-instrumentalist and singer. At seven, Czerny’s talent had already shown itself in the form of his first compositions; and at eight he was able to approach some works composed by a still young Beethoven. Czerny’s teacher put him in touch with the German composer, who completed his technical education but also introduced him to the finesses of piano interpretation, through the fundamental treatise signed by one of Bach’s sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel. At age nine, Czerny debuted as a soloist in Vienna, performing the extremely complex C-minor concerto by Mozart, whose difficulty is technical as well as artistic. Czerny’s regular lessons with Beethoven came to an end when the boy was just a teenager, but their friendship lasted and grew with time; Beethoven showed his appreciation and esteem for his former student on a number of occasions, and in particular he demonstrated his reliance on Czerny’s precision by entrusting him with the proof checking of his published works. Furthermore, Czerny would play Beethoven’s music for his entire life, and, during his former teacher’s lifetime, he would also premiere some of his works. A telling demonstration of Beethoven’s appreciation of Czerny is the fact that Czerny became the piano teacher of Beethoven’s nephew; Czerny, in fact, combined the instruction he had received from Beethoven with that he inherited from Clementi during the Italian maestro’s stay in Vienna.
Czerny was also able to play practically the entire pianistic oeuvre by Beethoven by heart, and his impressive knowledge of the repertoire of both the past and the present would be one of the many resources he employed in his own teaching, especially with as gifted a student as Franz Liszt. Similar to what had happened between Beethoven and Czerny, Liszt was brought to Czerny at age nine. Whereas, however, the child Czerny was already very structured as a pianist by the time he began his courses with Beethoven, the same could not be said of the young Liszt. Czerny recalls their encounter with mixed feelings: “He was a pale, sickly-looking child, who, while playing, swayed about on the stool as if drunk…His playing was… irregular, untidy, confused, and…he threw his fingers quite arbitrarily all over the keyboard. But that notwithstanding, I was astonished at the talent Nature had bestowed upon him”.
Liszt would profit immensely from Czerny’s teaching (and his gratitude was increased by the fact the Czerny did not ask for remuneration, in consideration of the boy’s impressive gifts). And, not just out of gratitude, Liszt would constantly play Czerny’s works in his own concerts, especially in Paris; indeed, he would dedicate some of his own most difficult compositions, the Etudes d’execution transcendante, to his former teacher.
Given these testimonies of Czerny’s artistic standing, the listener is invited to approach with a blend of curiosity and wonder the recordings issued on this album. The first composition offered here is the “Grand Sonata” op. 145 in B minor, which stands as a lasting legacy of Czerny’s mastery of “all things pianistic”. It is a summa of technical difficulties, as one could expect; its broad scope and complex writing reveal its ambitious conception, and also the ability of its composer to mix the ingredients at his disposal. From the viewpoint of form, it is a large-scale work; as concerns style, it is typical for the transition between Classical and Romantic era, with structural clarity in its architecture but also fiery and inflamed outbursts of impassionate expressiveness.
This Sonata belongs to a cycle, of which it represents the second longest work; it contains, among others, two scherzos and a fugal movement, and is clearly conceived as a majestic architecture of its own. Its dedicatee was Ignaz Moscheles, another great pianist and composer of Czerny’s time (also belonging in Beethoven’s circle). It opens with a superb movement in Sonata form, followed by a scherzo, whose theme will resurface in the fifth and sixth movements, anticipating Franz Liszt’s use of recurring motifs. The Adagio is reminiscent of other slow movements from earlier Sonatas, and is punctuated by drumroll motifs. A second scherzo follows, in the tempo and style of a Badinerie. A Sonata-Rondo follows, in which previously-heard motifs are cited, but also subtly disguised. The following three-part Fugue recalls the theme of the first scherzo. This Sonata displays a remarkable tonal and motivic consistency, with citations and transformations of themes and motifs.
If a music lover were to hear someone mention a Sonata in F minor, Op. 57, they would quite naturally assume it refers to Beethoven. And indeed, the F minor Sonata Op. 57 is universally known as the Appassionata and stands among Beethoven’s most iconic works.
Yet Czerny also composed a Sonata in F minor, Op. 57, sharing not only the opus number and key, but also an unmistakable Beethovenian spirit. Given Czerny’s profound admiration for his teacher and his intimate knowledge of Beethoven’s oeuvre, it is difficult to consider this convergence purely coincidental. By adopting the same key and opus number, Czerny subtly places his work in dialogue with one of Beethoven’s most celebrated piano sonatas, paying respectful homage while asserting his own compositional voice. Its composition date, 1824, follows by two years the composition of Beethoven’s last Piano Sonatas. Notwithstanding all this, it seems also clear that the true model of Czerny’s F-minor Sonata is not really Beethoven’s Appassionata, but rather the very first Sonata signed by Beethoven, op. 2 no. 1. References to Beethoven’s op. 57 abound nevertheless, for instance in the use of dotted rhythms. In the Andante, Czerny pays homage to another of Beethoven’s signature traits, i.e. his ability to write themes with variations. Although Czerny’s theme here is very simple, to the brink of naivety, the composer underscores his desire that this movement be taken seriously, as an opportunity for expressive playing. The Scherzo reaches its high point in the Trio, which is punctuated by rests, dramatic gestures, and unexpected harmonic turns.
The Finale, a grand construction full of momentum and epos, is a majestic sonata form in which Czerny pushes his exploration of piano sound and technique to the utmost and reveals his “revolutionary” spirit which other works of his output may occasionally hide. Just as happens with Beethoven’s Appassionata, here too this great movement is closed by an enthralling Coda.
This album is capped by excerpts taken from a collection called Der Pianist im klassischen Style, in which Czerny demonstrates his devotion to J. S. Bach by composing a series of Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues in all keys, conceived as a preparation for Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. It is a compositional tour de force, in which both Bach and Beethoven are present, and Czerny shows his talent as a worthy disciple of them both.
Together, these compositions, with their inventiveness, brilliancy, poignancy, and masterly craftmanship, are living witnesses to Czerny’s masterful art and to the enduring legacy of his personality.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2025
Kaori Saeki was born in Japan and began playing the piano at the age of four.
She studied law at university in Japan, focusing on human rights, legal studies, folklore, war, criminology, world history, and international politics. After graduation, she worked as an office employee in Tokyo. In 2010, she had the opportunity to attend a seminar in Tokyo given by Professor Stephan Möller. She was subsequently accepted into his class at the Prayner Conservatory in Vienna and moved there in 2012. She studied solo piano with Professor Stephan Möller and chamber music with Professor Konstantin Weitz. After only two years of study, she completed her artistic diploma with honors (Ausgezeichnet).
In 2014, she made her debut at the Golden Key Festival at Carnegie Hall in New York, performing Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 as a soloist and Beethoven’s Große Fuge Op. 134 in a piano duo with Professor Möller.
In addition to her solo work, she has gained extensive experience as a chamber musician and accompanist, having performed with vocalists and instrumentalists playing violin, viola, cello, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, saxophone, horn, trumpet, trombone, and tuba in numerous concerts and diploma examinations. Her repertoire covers the major standard works for a wide range of instruments.
Kaori Saeki is currently one of the busiest and most versatile musicians based in Vienna. In 2018, she launched the “Beethoven–Czerny–Liszt Project” to promote the music of Carl Czerny, highlighting his identity as a true Viennese composer, born and died in Vienna. She regularly performed Czerny’s piano sonatas at the Gesellschaft für Musiktheater and at the Floridsdorf Museum in Vienna.
In 2021, she was invited to the Beethoven Festival in Brake, Germany, organized by Professor Kurt Seibert, where she performed an evening recital of Czerny’s sonatas and nocturnes. That same year, she performed all of Beethoven’s violin sonatas over the course of three days with violinist Jonathan Cano in Vienna. In 2022, she performed all eleven of Czerny’s piano sonatas in a four-day marathon concert series at the Gesellschaft für Musiktheater in Vienna, and again in 2023 at Salon Freiraum in Salzburg.
Together with violinist Jonathan Cano and countertenor/composer Rubén Berroeta, she founded the Ensemble JoKaRu, with which she performs regularly. Since 2020, JoKaRu has been consistently invited by the Polish cultural organization Fundacja Wspólna Przestrzeń, founded and directed by Mariola Fanselow and Cezary Fanselow, to give concerts and masterclasses. In 2024, the ensemble embarked on a concert tour to five cities in Poland and held workshops for children, sponsored by Polish national television and radio. That same year, they performed at the 39th Alfonso Ortiz Tirado Festival in Sonora, Mexico, presenting a program that included contemporary works by Rubén Berroeta.
In 2023, Kaori Saeki performed George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the wind orchestra “Musikverein Lenzing Werkskapelle” under the baton of conductor Manfred Röhrer. She also appeared as celesta player with Cappella Istropolitana, conducted by Vasilis Tsiatsianis, at the Great Hall of the Wiener Musikverein. Additionally, she was invited by Cerabino Pianoforti in Milan, Italy, to perform in concert with mezzo-soprano Yulia Savrasova at San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore.
Since 2024, she has served as a jury member for the International Rosario Marciano Piano Competition, organized by Professor Stephan Möller and presided over by Professor Kurt Seibert.
Carl Czerny: (b Vienna, 21 Feb 1791; d Vienna, 15 July 1857) Austrian piano teacher, composer, pianist, theorist and historian. As the pre-eminent pupil of Beethoven and the teacher of many important pupils, including Liszt, Czerny was a central figure in the transmission of Beethoven’s legacy. Many of his technical exercises remain an essential part of nearly every pianist’s training, but most of his compositions – in nearly every genre, sacred and secular, with opus numbers totalling 861, and an even greater number of works published without opus – are largely forgotten. A large number of theoretical works are of great importance for the insight they offer into contemporary musical genres and performance practice.
The primary source of information about Czerny is his autobiographical sketch entitled Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (1842). In it, he describes his paternal grandfather as a good amateur violinist, employed as a city official in Nimburg (Nymburk), near Prague. Czerny’s father, Wenzel, a pianist, organist, oboist and singer, was born there in 1750, and received his education and a good musical training in a Benedictine monastery near Prague. After marriage, Wenzel settled in Vienna in 1786, where he earned a meagre existence as a music teacher and piano repairman. Czerny, an only child, was born in Vienna in the year of Mozart’s death. He and his parents resided together until his mother’s death in 1827, and his father’s in 1832. He never married, and lived alone for the remainder of his life.
Czerny describes his childhood as ‘under my parents’ constant supervision… carefully isolated from other children’. He began to study the piano with his father at an early age, and by ten was ‘able to play cleanly and fluently nearly everything of Mozart [and] Clementi’. His first efforts at composition began around the age of seven. In 1799, he began to study Beethoven’s compositions, coached by Wenzel Krumpholz, a violinist in the Court Opera orchestra, who introduced him to Beethoven when he was ten. Czerny played for him the opening movement of Mozart’s C major Piano Concerto, k503, the ‘Pathétique’ Sonata, and the accompaniment to Adelaide, which his father sang. Beethoven indicated that he wanted to teach Czerny several times a week, and told his father to procure C.P.E. Bach’s Versuch. Czerny describes the lessons as consisting of scales and technique at first, then progressing through the Versuch, with the stress on legato technique throughout. The lessons stopped around 1802, because Beethoven needed to concentrate for longer periods of time on composition, and because Czerny’s father was unable to sacrifice his own lessons in order to take his son to Beethoven. Czerny neverthless remained on close terms with the composer, who asked him to proofread all his newly published works, and entrusted him with the piano reduction of the score of Fidelio in 1805.
In 1800, Czerny made his public début in the Vienna Augarten hall, performing Mozart’s C minor Concerto k491. He was renowned for his interpretation of Beethoven’s work, performing the First Concerto in C major in 1806, and the ‘Emperor’ in 1812. Beginning in 1816 he gave weekly programmes at his home devoted exclusively to Beethoven’s piano music, many of which were attended by the composer. Apparently he could perform all of Beethoven’s piano music from memory. Although his playing was praised by many critics (‘uncommonly fiery’, according to Schilling), he did not pursue a career as a performer. He made arrangements for a concert tour in 1805, for which Beethoven wrote a glowing testimonial, but although he describes himself at this time as quite proficient as a pianist, sight-reader and improviser, he concedes that ‘my playing lacked the type of brilliant, calculated charlantry that is usually part of a travelling virtuoso’s essential equipment’. For these reasons, in addition to political instability and the modest income of his family, he chose to cancel the tour. He also apparently decided at this point never to undertake the life of a travelling virtuoso, a path that would have made him more widely known as a performer. Instead, he decided to concentrate on teaching and composition.
He spent a good deal of time with Clementi when the latter was in Vienna in 1810, becoming familiar with his method of teaching, which Czerny greatly admired and incorporated into his own pedagogy (His op.822 is entitled the Nouveau Gradus ad Parnassum). In his early teens Czerny began to teach some of his father’s students. By the age of 15, he was commanding a good price for his lessons, and had many pupils. In 1815, Beethoven asked him to teach his nephew, Carl. As his reputation continued to grow, he was able to command a lucrative fee, and for the next 21 years he claims to have given 12 lessons a day, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., until he gave up teaching entirely in 1836. In 1821, the nine-year-old Liszt began a two-year period of study with Czerny. The teacher noted that ‘never before had I had so eager, talented, or industrious a student’, but lamented that Liszt had begun his performing career too early, without proper training in composition. Czerny also taught Döhler, Kullak, Alfred Jaëll, Thalberg, Heller, Ninette von Bellevile-Oury and Blahetka.
Around 1802, Czerny began to copy out many J.S. Bach fugues, Scarlatti sonatas and other works by ‘ancient’ composers. He describes learning orchestration by copying the parts from the first two Beethoven symphonies, and several Haydn and Mozart symphonies as well. He published his first composition in 1806 at the age of 15: a set of 20 Variations concertantes for piano and violin op.1 on a theme by Krumpholz. Until he gave up teaching, composition occupied ‘every free moment I had’, usually the evenings. The popularity of his first ten opus numbers issued in 1818–19, and of his arrangements of works by other composers, made publishers eager to print anything he would submit, and he earned a substantial amount from his compositions.
The quantity and diversity of Czerny’s compositional output is staggering. He divided his works into four categories: 1) studies and exercises; 2) easy pieces for students; 3) brilliant pieces for concerts; and 4) serious music. As Kuerti (1995, p.7) notes, it is interesting and revealing that he did not regard the ‘brilliant pieces for concerts’ as ‘serious music’. The compositions for piano illustrate the explosion in the number of works published for the instrument at a critical time in its development. In addition to approximately 100 technical studies, Czerny published piano sonatas, sonatinas and hundreds of shorter works, many of which were arranged for piano, four to eight hands. He also published a plethora of works based on national anthems, folksongs, and other well-known songs. Works for other instruments and genres include much symphonic and chamber music, as well as sacred choral music. Mandyczewski’s tabulation of the works remaining in manuscript in the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde includes over 300 sacred works. Czerny published approximately 300 arrangements without opus numbers. These works are based on themes from approximately 100 different operas and ballets, plus symphonies, overtures and oratorios by such composers as Auber, Beethoven, Bellini, Cherubini, Donizetti, Halévy, Handel, Haydn, Hérold, Mendelssohn, Mercadante, Meyerbeer, Mozart, Rossini, Spohr, Verdi, Wagner and Weber.
The predominant view of Czerny at the end of the 20th century – of the pedagogue churning out a seemingly endless stream of uninspired works – is that propagated by Robert Schumann in his reviews of many Czerny compositions in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (‘it would be hard to discover a greater bankruptcy in imagination than Czerny has proved’, review of The Four Seasons, 4 brillant fantasias op.434). However, Schumann’s rather cavalier dismissal of Czerny was not uniformly shared. During his sojourn in Vienna (1829), Chopin was a frequent visitor at Czerny’s home, and a good deal of correspondence between the two survives. One of Liszt’s letters from Paris to his teacher in Vienna (26 August 1830) describes his performances of Czerny’s Piano Sonata no.1 in A major op.7, and the work’s enthusiastic reception. He urged Czerny to join him in Paris. Liszt’s high regard is again seen in his inclusion of Czerny as one of the contributors to his Hexaméron, the Grand Variations on the March from Bellini’s I puritani, arranged by Liszt, and including variations by Chopin, Czerny, Herz, Liszt, Pixis and Thalberg, composed in 1837. Perhaps even more striking and challenging is Kriehuber’s famous portrait (1846), which depicts, assembled around Liszt at the piano (in addition to a self portrait of the painter), Berlioz, Czerny and the violinist Heinrich Ernst, who was regarded as one of the greatest virtuosos of the 19th century. All are lost in the Romantic reverie evoked by Liszt’s performance. Perhaps this symbolizes Beethoven’s spirit as transmitted by Czerny to Liszt, Berlioz and Ernst.
Czerny’s complete schools and treatises combine sound pedagogy with remarkable revelations about contemporary performing practices, and present a detailed picture of the musical culture of the day. He assigned prominent opus numbers to his four most ambitious instructional works. In the Fantasie-Schule, opp.200 and 300, he uses stylized models and what he terms a ‘systematic’ approach to improvising preludes, modulations, cadenzas, fermatas, fantasies, potpourris, variations, strict and fugal styles and capriccios. His Schule des Fugenspiels, op.400, comprising 12 pairs of preludes and fugues, is intended as a study in multi-voiced playing for pianists. His most substantial work, the Pianoforte-Schule, op.500, covers an extraordinary range of topics, including improvisation, transposition, score reading, concert decorum and piano maintenance. The fourth volume (added in 1846) includes advice on the performance of new works by Chopin, Liszt and other notable composers of the day, as well as on Bach and Handel, and Czerny also draws on his reminiscences of Beethoven’s playing and teaching. In his last major treatise, the Schule der praktischen Tonsetzkunst, op.600, he returns to the models of form and descriptions of style first expounded in his op.200, but here uses them for the instruction of composers.
Czerny’s works reveal, in addition to the familiar pedagogue and virtuoso, an artist of taste, passion, sensitivity, drama, lyricism and solitude. Douglas Townsend sees in the four-hand sonata in C minor op.10 (Sonata sentimentale) a fine example of the composers who straddled the classical tradition and early romanticism. Kuerti (1995, p.491) has described the Third Sonata in F minor op.57 as ‘outstandingly original’; because it is in the same key and carries the same opus as Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’, Kuerti suggests that Czerny may have been challenging his former master to a duel in the work. Townsend describes the Concerto in C major for piano four hands and orchestra, op.153 as ‘an interesting example of the late classical piano concerto combined with the emerging bravura piano technique of the mid-nineteenth century’. Certain of the exercises stand as fine compositions in their own right, such as some of the character pieces found in the Left Hand Etudes, op.718, and the Art of Finger Dexterity, op.740.
Czerny’s will (published in Dwight’s Journal of Music, 15 August 1857) details the sizable fortune he had amassed from his published works and wealthy pupils. He left his considerable library to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.
by STEPHAN LINDEMAN (with GEORGE BARTH)
from From New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
13.76€
