Clementi was born before Mozart and outlived Beethoven. As such you might expect a corresponding change in the temperament of his music. You don’t get what you are expecting. Though the composer of the famous Op. 36 Sonatinas, the staple of virtually every piano student in history, was much more lauded in his own day (Mozart thought him nothing but a raw technician), his work has more or less been neglected since that time. This is a shame, for his sonatas do display some wonderful moments and ingenious techniques (no one could write in thirds, sixths, and pounding octaves like he could), and he was at least a minor master at delicate slow movements and energetic rondos, the latter taken far beyond what most other composers attempted in those days, almost an art form itself. His piano concertos are very rewarding.
Clementi admitted in later years that he did indeed go through a period of showmanship and flash, and this is fully present in much of the music, Czerny-like fireworks designed to awe an audience. But it is great fun to listen to, and never for a moment do we feel like the effects are vapid or unsubstantial—he was primarily a serious musician who expected much out of these sonatas, and wanted performers to take them seriously as well.
Howard Shelly is now into the second volume of two-disc sets (selling for the price of one), and they are everything one could ask for in this music. He has the flash, the subtlety, and the know-how as to what this rather odd period in music was like for composers other than Mozart and Beethoven. Clementi shows us the crossroads of two styles, one concluding, and one just beginning, and his own answer to the developments that were taking place fast and furiously. Shelly is well-attuned to the difficulties, and presents Clementi’s music in as about as favorable a light as one could imagine. These sonatas will not find their way into your player as often as Mozart’s (who was far more profound and tightly-structured) or Beethoven’s (whose sonatas are the center of the Western Canon), but they make an agreeable diversion every once in a while, and you might find yourself actually starting to take a liking to many of them.
[Here are some other Clementi Sonatas discs we have reviewed:
https://www.audaud.com/article.php?ArticleID=1753
https://www.audaud.com/audaud/MAR04/reissues/recds2.html ]
— Steven Ritter
