reviews

Eighteenth-Century Music © Cambridge University Press, 2016

doi:10.1017/S1478570615000585

muzio clementi (1752–1832)

THE FATHER OF THE PIANOFORTE: TOCCATA OPUS 11, SONATAS OPUS 33 NO. 2, OPUS 40 NO. 3,
OPUS 25 NO. 5, OPUS 50 NO. 1
Simon Conning (piano)
Meridian CDE84629, 2014; one disc, 80 minutes

Something of a Clementi ‘renaissance’ began early this century, with the Opera Omnia team in Italy publishing
their first numbers of a sixty-volume urtext edition of the composer’s complete works (Bologna: Ut Orpheus,
2000–). Further momentum has gathered through a number of Clementi-only CD releases (a couple a year
on average since about 2002). It has now become easy to access recordings of Clementi’s piano sonatas, but
not all performers show equal degrees of commitment to this challenging repertoire. Simon Conning’s debut
recording stands out from the crowd, portraying Clementi’s piano music at its sophisticated best. Conning’s
selection is telling, comprising mostly works taken from Clementi’s middle and late periods. According
to Leon Plantinga, such works are characterized by a ‘leisurely construction, far-flung harmonic palette,
and extravagant chromaticism’, in addition to rich sonorities and abundant contrapuntal textures (Leon
Plantinga, ‘Clementi “et ses trois styles”’, in Muzio Clementi: cosmopolita della musica, ed. Richard Bösel and
Massimiliano Sala (Bologna: Ut Orpheus, 2004), 15–22).
The Toccata Op. 11 is the exception here – an early showpiece that frustrated Mozart during his pianistic
duel with Clementi in 1781. Conning shows mastery of this extremely perilous work, crammed with rapid
double thirds and sixths. He follows Clementi’s legato slurs accurately and resists the temptation to lighten
the articulation in the manner of a Scarlattian toccata; indeed, this piece represents one potent example of
early legato technique, and there is no doubt that such legato would have played a role in so impressing
Mozart.
Mozart particularly disliked Clementi’s ‘Prestissimo alla breve’ marking in the Toccata, which he heard
as a mere ‘Allegro in 4/4 time’ under Clementi’s hands (Emily Anderson, ed., The Letters of Mozart and
His Family (London: Macmillan, 1966), 850). Interestingly, Clementi’s 1804 revision of the work alters the
metre to 4/4, with quavers often beamed six by six. This is what is heard in Conning’s performance, and it
is unlikely that Clementi’s own tempo would have been much faster – Prestissimo suggests perhaps to play
as fast as possible rather than to abide by an absolute tempo scale. Conning also performs the Presto of the
two-movement Sonata Op. 33 No. 2 in F major (of 1794) in a grand and lively manner, thus showing that,
despite appearances to the contrary, this work belongs nowhere close to the sonatina genre.
Elsewhere, Conning’s choice of tempos in fast movements is nevertheless questionably conservative at
times. In the opening movement of the Sonata Op. 50 No. 1 in A major, Conning’s performance sits
comfortably around ‘crotchet equals 88–92’, where Clementi wrote ‘minim equals 58’ (thus ‘crotchet equals
116’, almost 30 per cent faster). Perhaps in this case Clementi’s tempo ‘Allegro maestoso e con sentimento’ led
the performer to undermine the ‘allegro’ component significantly in favour of highlighting the ‘maestoso’
character of the movement. Nonetheless, if we are to follow Clementi’s tempo scale listed in his Introduction
to the Art of Playing on the Piano Forte, ‘maestoso’ is faster than even allegretto or moderato (London:
Clementi, 1801; facsimile edition, ed. Sandra Rosenblum, New York: Da Capo, 1974).
Another contentious tempo choice is that of the Allegro in the first movement of the Sonata Op. 40
No. 3 in D. Here the section starts with crotchet movement that accelerates into a regular, semiquaver-rich
exposition. Conning’s tempo is roughly ‘crotchet equals 120’, which in principle fits the ‘Allegro’ label rather
well. But the semiquavers sound somewhat laboured and the crotchet beats over-accentuated, as if the
performer is emphatically reminding us, bar after bar, that this movement is written in 4/4 metre, not 2/2.
(Contrast Nikolai Demidenko on Hyperion CDA66808 (1995), in which this section is heard distinctly – and
mistakenly – as alla breve.) Such an approach appears to undermine the brilliance of the movement, though

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the contrapuntal elements in the development section are projected with persuasion. This is a point in the
movement where Conning’s tempo choice becomes convincing.
Such an observation, indeed, presents a challenge to mainstream thinking that tempo should remain
unaltered in the performance of a movement from the classical repertoire (see Richard Taruskin, Text and
Act: Essays on Music and Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 235–260 (‘Resisting the
Ninth’)). Admittedly, there are no known reports of Clementi altering tempos within a given movement
during performance. However, Beethoven’s assumption of such tempo changes is evidenced in the oft-
quoted autograph of his song ‘Nord oder Süd’, in which he wrote: ‘100 according to Malzel[’s metronome],
but this is valid only for the first measures, since feeling also has its beat, which however cannot be expressed
completely by this tempo (namely, 100)’ (Adolph Bernard Marx, Anleitung zum Vortrag Beethovenscher
Klavierwerke (Berlin, 1875), 69; translated in Kenneth Drake, The Beethoven Sonatas and the Creative
Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 33). Artur Schnabel’s editions of the Beethoven
sonatas, with their many suggested metronome marks (as many as thirty-eight in the first movement of the
Sonata Op. 57 (‘Appassionata’) alone) are among several testimonies to the effect that tempo changes may
occur quite naturally throughout Beethoven sonata movements, and indeed in classical keyboard repertoire
in general. Following this line of thought, a listener or performer of Clementi’s time may not have considered
Conning’s tempo in the development of Clementi’s Op. 50 No. 1 incompatible with a faster start to the Allegro.
In Clementi performance, however, tempo and rhythmic flexibility pose perhaps greater challenges than in
Beethoven performance. Kathleen Dale observes, in her article on Clementi’s music, that Clementi ‘was often
deficient in rhythmic enterprise’ (Dale, ‘Hours with Muzio Clementi’, Music & Letters 24/3 (1943), 150). Such
a judgment begs the question of how exactly one might define ‘rhythmic enterprise’. One may observe that
Clementi generally makes less use of syncopation than Mozart, Haydn or Beethoven, and that his thematic
material often follows the metric ‘grid’ quite strictly, yet his melodic lines are inherently flexible and imbued
with a sense of ‘breath’ and singing quality that may be considered at odds with notions of regularity or
strictness – the latter judgements still prevailing in mainstream evaluations of Clementi’s music nowadays.
Clementi’s large-scale piano works, such as those featured in this recording, present a peculiar performance
conundrum: notation that may at times look somewhat square and yet represents sophisticated, often spirited
and highly lively music. In fact, it is easy to be deceived by the appearance of some Clementi scores, as one
can gather from Carl Czerny’s account that the study of Clementi’s sonatas ‘will always remain the best
school for the pianist, if one knows how to study them in his spirit’ (Czerny, ‘Recollections from My Life’, trans.
Ernest Sanders, The Musical Quarterly 42/3 (1956), 315; the italics are Czerny’s). This ‘spirit’ may well relate
to the vivid and rather unique paradox between freedom and restraint inherent in Clementi’s best sonatas –
making these arguably even more challenging in this respect than the masterpieces of the Viennese ‘trinity’.
What we do know is that Clementi would have expected some kind of rubato around markings such as
dolce and con espressione:

Dolce . . . means sweet, with taste; now and then swelling some notes. . . .

Con espressione, or Con anima, with expression; that is, with passionate feeling; where every note has
its peculiar force and energy; and where even the severity of time may be relaxed for extraordinary
effects. (Introduction to the Art of Playing on the Piano Forte, ed. Rosenblum, 9 and 14)

Furthermore, Clementi was described in 1784 as playing ‘with a continual swelling and receding with
unwritten lentando and rubando that it would be impossible to express on paper’ (anonymous, ‘Nachricht
von dem Clavierspieler Clementi’, Magazin der Musik 2 (1784), 365–373; quoted in Plantinga, Clementi: His
Life and Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), 72).
Such constant ‘micro-shaping’ is often what is missed by modern-day performers of Clementi’s piano
music, so strong is the conditioning to ‘classicize’ his music into a straight-jacketed, steady (and rather
uneventful) presentation of his works. Conning’s recording defies the trend, showing at every corner of a
phrase how flexible and moving the music can be. The slow movements of the Sonatas Op. 40 No. 3 and

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Op. 50 No. 1 are cases in point, with their broad and richly projected, almost Brahmsian legato as well as
highly expressive vocal right-hand lines and left-hand countermelodies or imitative lines. There is no doubt
that Clementi was a visionary pianist, making the change to a pervasive legato style an unequivocal affair
– arguably the most significant evolutionary leap in piano technique ever to have been made. It is perhaps
ironic, then, that so many recordings undermine this quality of his music.
It takes commitment to perform Clementi convincingly, and Conning certainly rises to the challenge. This
is a pianist who takes Clementi seriously and plays his music with deep insight, showing that Clementi’s large-
scale sonatas may be considered among the most successful works of their era. Conning does not belong to the
publicized world of competition pianists. Some may find the legendary (but very few) Clementi recordings
by Gilels, Michelangeli or Horowitz more satisfyingly masterful. But Conning is a highly intelligent and
perceptive performer, armed with pianistic abilities that allow him to project the music with integrity,
thoughtfulness and conviction. Perhaps the over-competitive climate that we live in calls more than ever for
such pianists with unique sensibilities. And perhaps this is what Clementi’s music also needs most.

jeremy eskenazi
<info@clementisociety.com>


Eighteenth-Century Music © Cambridge University Press, 2016
doi:10.1017/S1478570615000597

daniel purcell (c1670–1717)

THE UNKNOWN PURCELL: SONATAS BY DANIEL PURCELL
Hazel Brooks (violin), David Pollock (harpsichord)
Chandos CHAN 0795, 2013; one disc, 76 minutes

Recordings of Daniel Purcell’s music are rare – in fact, I have only found one other recording of any of
his sonatas, on a disc by Les Trésors d’Orphée on which solo and trio sonatas (for flute and recorder) are
interspersed with cantatas (Stradivarius STR 33360, 1994). Known facts about Daniel Purcell are as rare as
recordings of his works, but as Peter Holman’s excellent booklet notes explain, Daniel Purcell was in fact
probably not Henry Purcell’s brother but a cousin. Daniel’s use of the term ‘brother’ in the Preface to his
Six Cantatas of 1713 was in keeping with seventeenth-century use of the word to describe members of an
extended family. Much of the recent clarification of Daniel’s early biography is in fact thanks to the research
of Mark Humphreys, who has also established that Daniel Purcell was probably born around 1670 and not
c1664 as given in Grove Music Online and other reference works (Humphreys, ‘Daniel Purcell: A Biography
and Thematic Catalogue’ (DPhil dissertation, University of Oxford, 2005)). Living as he did for more than
twenty years after Henry Purcell’s death, it is hard to see how Daniel’s music can be heard solely as derivative
of the older composer’s style. In fact, as Holman points out, Daniel Purcell’s compositions include styles and
forms popular in England around 1700, among which is the solo sonata.
A choirboy at the Chapel Royal between 1678 and 1682, Daniel Purcell became organist at Magdalen
College Oxford in 1688, moving to London in 1695 to finish Henry Purcell’s semi-opera The Indian Queen.
Thereafter, the majority of his works were composed for the London stage but he carried on working as an
organist and was involved in public concerts. The establishment of the Italian opera company in London
in 1707 necessitated a change in direction as public favour turned away from the old-style masques and
semi-operas, and some of Daniel’s sonatas date from this period.
For their recording Brooks and Pollock have chosen a combination of solo sonatas and music for
harpsichord. The majority of the latter take the form of arrangements, and the recording includes most
of Daniel Purcell’s existing music for the instrument. The arrangements for harpsichord of ‘Lovely charmer’
(from Peter Anthony Motteux’s semi-opera of 1699, The Island Princess) and ‘What ungrateful devil moves

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