Czerny’s style

The Piano Sonatas Dating from 1810-43, the sonatas are personal works. Sonata No. 3 shares more than its opus number – 57 – with Beethoven’s Appassionata, and the second movement of No. 4 has a whiff of romantic lyricism worthy of the best. The finest movement in them all is the pilgrim’s march-like variations on a Czech hymn in No. 6, referring to Czerny’s Catholicism. Fugue Beethoven’s teaching involved studying Bach. Czerny passed that knowledge of Bach to Liszt and dedicated his Op. 856 preludes and fugues to him. To Czerny we owe Liszt’s inventive use of fugue in his Faust and Dante symphonies, the B minor Sonata and the B-A-C-H Fantasy and Fugue. Quartets Czerny’s large body of chamber music includes between 20 and 40 quartets, none with an opus number. Still being discovered, they reveal the heart of Czerny, the true musician. Generally more Haydn-esque than Beethovenian, they include a Schubertian A minor quartet and a D minor with Romantic tremolando accompaniments. Legacy As a teacher and composer, Czerny is a direct link for many of today’s musicians back to Beethoven and beyond. Many of the 20th-century keyboard greats descend from Czerny pupils. Wanda Landowska (right), Prokofiev, Claudio Arrau, Dohnányi and Gyorgy Cziffra were great-grand-pupils of his, Van Cliburn and Daniel Barenboim, great-greatgrand-pupils.