Three to look out for…
Jean-baptiste Doulcet pianist
Born: Paris, France Career highlights: I was thrilled to win prizes at the Long-thibaud and Clara Haskil piano competitions in 2019. I was also proud of my debut live CD released in 2016, and Un Monde Fantastique, released this year, includes alongside Schumann and Liszt a composition of mine.
Musical hero: Liszt’s multiple identities
– his thirst for travelling and cultural understanding, his genius inventions for piano-making and his ability to bring pure compositional chemistry to his improvisation – raise a lot of questions about being an artist and a human being.
Dream concert: An intense moment of both relaxation and music-making, where the repertoire and the art of improvisation mix in a fluid manner and touch the audience. Simon Lopez clarinettist
Born: Paris, France Career highlight: I won Season 8 of Prodiges,a French TV show revealing young classical talents on France 2. Thanks to this, I could record my first album with Warner Classics, to be released in December.
Musical hero: I think Rachmaninov’s music touches me the most, especially his piano concertos. As I advance in my musical journey, I discover and play pieces that I like more than all the others.
Dream concert: Debussy’s First Rhapsody for Clarinet in a magnificent hall like the Philharmonie de Paris, with a large orchestra. Roberto Ruisi violinist
Born: Birmingham, UK Career highlight: My first time as a leader at the BBC Proms in 2012. I became so excited by the electric atmosphere inside a packed Royal Albert Hall that mid-performance I threw my bow 10 feet in the air, to the amusement of both audience and conductor. Musical heroes: My older brothers, Alessandro and Max. Alessandro’s artistry on the violin has been a constant inspiration, and Max is taking the world by storm with the pioneering 12 Ensemble.
Dream concert: Returning to my father’s birthplace, Palermo, and performing at the majestic Teatro Massimo. One day I’d like to set up a festival there.
a similar invitation. Both men readily accepted. But did they know in advance they would be pitted against one another in a piano-playing competition? If Clementi’s account of the evening is anything to go by, it would seem not.
‘On entering the Emperor’s music room I found there someone whom, because of his elegant appearance, I took for one of the Emperor’s chamberlains,’ he later recounted. ‘But scarcely had we begun a conversation when we soon recognised each other as Mozart and Clementi.’
If the two performers were in the dark about the real purpose of their invitations, Emperor Joseph and his guests were not. Joseph had even struck a wager with the visiting Grand Duchess of Russia over who was the greater exponent of the fortepiano – he favoured Mozart – and on 24 December the stage was set to settle the issue definitively.
Clementi played first, choosing his recently composed Sonata in B flat major, Op. 24 No. 2, followed by a toccata. Mozart then responded. ‘I too improvised and played some variations,’ he wrote to his father Leopold a few weeks later. Both soloists continued with music by Paisiello and more variations, the gathered luminaries no doubt looking on in amazement. Who, they wondered, had made the bigger impression and won the musical duel of the century?
The Grand Duchess, it was reported, was so bowled over by the brilliance of Mozart’s playing she conceded that she had lost their wager. Although the Emperor himself is said to have declared the contest an honourable draw, we have no clear evidence of how he reacted, so he may have kept a diplomatic silence. Mozart later claimed to have heard ‘on very good authority’ that the Emperor was ‘very pleased’ with his playing. He received 50 ducats for his efforts, ‘which I need quite badly right now’.
The epic keyboard battle left Mozart and Clementi with sharply different
‘Clementi hasn’t a kreuzer’s worth of taste of sensibility – he is a mere machine’
impressions of one another’s playing. Clementi was conspicuously generous about his younger rival. ‘Until then
I had never heard anyone play with such spirit and grace,’ he commented. Mozart, while grudgingly conceding that Clementi played well technically, was withering in his overall assessment. ‘He hasn’t a kreuzer’s worth of taste or sensibility,’ he told his father. ‘He’s a mere machine.’
Ten years later, however, the opening theme of the Op. 24 Sonata Clementi played for the Emperor resurfaced note-for-note in the overture to Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. The ‘machine’, it seems, had made a small impression after all when he and Mozart swapped roulades and arpeggios in their piano duel together. Terry Blain