Romantic Carl Czerny

Carl Czerny

Source: Bach Cantatas

Born on 21 February 1791, Carl Czerny (cher-nee) was a pianist who composed above a thousand works, largely with piano instruction in mind, though other kinds as well including sacred. Piano works include concertos, fantasies, impromptus (brief solo pieces reminiscent of improvisation), rondeaux, sonatas, variations, waltzes, et al. Czerny's considerable prestige has carried onward to this time due to his advanced piano techniques, and his students who themselves became successful composers, Franz Liszt in particular [influence]. Czerny also comes with a flashing "Difficult to Play" warning. Though most of Czerny is played in quick tempo of high spirit, he managed to mix beauty into it as well.

Albeit popped from the oven in Vienna, Czerny was Czech. His father was a piano teacher from the Czech region, his mother Moravian east of there. Neither of them spoke German when they first arrived to Vienna. The family lived in Poland from 1791 to 1795 until returning to Vienna. As a piano instructor, Czerny's father had wasted no time clearing Carl's path. Playing piano at age three and composing at seven, Czerny first publicly performed in 1800, that a concerto by Mozart. Beginning in 1801 he studied under Beethoven for the next three years, such the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Czerny had a phenomenal memory and could play any piece by Beethoven on call by 1804-05. Beethoven chose Czerny to premiere his first concerto in 1806 as well as his fifth in 1812.

Czerny began teaching in 1806. Liszt would become a pupil in 1819, due to whose skill Czerny instructed him for free. Multiple sources have Czerny's first Opus of 861 of them not only composed at age fifteen in 1806 but published the same year titled 'Variations concertantes pour Pianoforte et Violon' also known as 'Variations concertantes on a Theme by Krumpholz' [New York Public Library / Stanford / Tang]. These twenty variations were to a theme by Jean-Baptiste Krumpholz who had died in 1790, presented to Czerny by Krumpholz' younger brother by eight years, Wenzel Krumpholz (Václav Krumpholz). If 1806 is the correct publishing date (not 1818) then Czerny's Op 2 didn't see print until more than a decade later in 1819, that his 'Rondeau brillante on Cavatine de Carafa à quatre mains' [Hyperion] (composed considerably earlier in 1807?). Czerny's next opuses included fantasies, more variations, another rondo and fifteen waltzes before his notable 'Piano Sonata No.1' in A major for violin and piano Op 7 written in 1810 [Kuerti / Stretta] toward print no earlier than 1819 or 1820 [IMSLP]. Yet more piano for four hands saw print about 1822 in Czerny's Op 10. Samples of Czerny are stacked chronologically below, but information about him on the internet leans to the contradictory and vague, so some dates are construed and unreliable.