I know that the value of Czerny's pedadgogical works is debated (to say the least), and I want to avoid that here. However, I saw a YouTube performance of number 41 from The Art of Finger Dexterity, and I really liked the piece.

Can people here please comment on the musical, rather than pedagogical, value of Czerny, and perhaps recommend some pieces that are worth studying for performance?

I heard Kuerti has perform Czerny's Sonata No.1 a long time ago. I think it had 5 movements and was interesting. Don't know if it's worthy of studying for performance. That would be up to you.

Josef Lhévinne often played the Ab octave study from Art of Finger Dexterity (#33) as an encore. His octaves were legendary, so you can imagine what a helluva show that must have been! Too bad he didn't record it...

Me thinks that's just about it though.. Higher musical value than Hannon for sure.. But then Czerny plateaus right around where Clementi starts..

On my local radio station I heard a sonata for piano duet by Czerny that I thought was quite good.

Found a link for a YT performance... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix9JdlnGT...PL&index=27

Yeh, and then Clementi plateaus right around where Schuman's Album für die Jugend starts.

He was actually very creative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Carl_Czerny

I actually do play all his exercises on a daily basis (together with Hanon) and have found them useful. However, I have to admit that I am less familiar with his more musical works (rather than pedagogical)...

The Wikipedia article has his Duo Concertante , which I find very nice. I hope to find the score!

CA

I thought he wrote 100's of excercises??

I love Czerny's music. A CD I have of the complete Op. 740 is easily in my Top 5 albums.

I also recommend the Toccata, Op. 92, which anticipates the Romantic "tocaatas" in style. (Sadly, I don't know of more than one recording of it, so I have to play it myself)

His opera fantasies are a bit uncreative, but still nice to listen to if you don't want all the fire of Liszt.

On an extramusical note, Czerny was an ailurophile.

Steven

DO you mean to say that someone actually wrote a biography of Czerny including his interest in cats and all??

I would be surprised if there even is a biography of Czerny. (Dang, the first English-language biography of Hummel was published a mere two years ago.) I guess this detail of his personal life, though widely known, could be apocryphal; Grove's doesn't mention it, though the mini-bio at Hyperion Records does:


Steven

Well I am gaining new respect for Czerny now. I think that cats are magnificent creatures. Love their aggressive side.

Czerny wrote his own autobiography, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, which is no longer in print, but which is the source of most of the stuff we know about Czerny today. (Dunno about the cat thing, though; I think that was just Harold Schonberg being funny in The Great Pianists)

Back to the music, though, if you get a chance, his second symphony is quite an interesting listen.

If you compare the score of Czerny's toccata with Schumann's, it will be obvious that Schumann must have known Czerny's work quite well.

Steven is our resident cat person here.

But don't forget pet rats. They are incredibly intelligent animals, awesomely clean (they even smell good), and very loyal and loving. I had several pet rats as a boy and will never forget their companionship.

A public service announcement from your resident 'rat' person.

Eeeewww. No rat person here. To each his own!

Cheers!

Yeah, I think I didn't express myself correctly, I meant I go through all his exercises in cycles and I play SOME every day until the cycle is completed again....

I read he wrote studies three at a time, going from page to page to page, letting the ink dry on the pages he had just written while writing the next one.

I know that Schumann's piece is revered as occupying a sort of ne plus ultra technical niche, but Czerny's looks significantly harder to me! My impression (on paper, anyway) is that the types of double-note figures exploited in the Czerny toccata would be more challenging to me.


I treasure cats and dogs equally, but I had great experiences with pet rodents as a kid, too. I love birds and am curious about ferrets as well, but with multiple cats and a dog ... it won't be happening anytime soon.

Here in the suburbs, certain types of livestock are permitted but, unfortunately, are counted in the maximum number of domestic animals allowed per household. I would love to have some pet chickens, but we're already maxed out. Dang.

Steven

Stick around long enough Horowitzian, and Jason might even turn you into a rat-patter! I have to say I'm not quite so repulsed by them in their pet form (as opposed to their scuttling-around-in-the-dead-of-night-chewing-things-then-dying-under-the-floor-where-you-can't-get-to-them-and-smelling-the-place-out-for-weeks form) as I used to be...
... but still ...

On Czerny - I really like some of his studies. He just overdid it a bit

Yes. My cat is Very fond of rats too. Very. Fond.
Except for a little bit of large intestine.
And she says they smell great too.

Um, some of us had pet rats, you know. They are gentle, loyal, loving creatures, intelligent and healing. Ours belonged to one of my children. He was allowed loose at a certain time of day and would go out exploring. If you called him he dashed full speed up to the person and affectionately licked a hand or finger, like a tiny dog with personality.

What a strange response to:

Oh! I'm sorry, that wasn't nice at all And I do know how it feels as my old neighbour in particular used to say things about cats, and especially my cat. My apologies.

Hey and I never knew that rats could come when called, or lick a hand - that's amazing. Always imagined they would be independant and not take much notice of their owners.

Np. Actually, before we had the rat, we could not imagine how anyone could like them. The local museum had an area with some rats in a glass cage. One day we watched the attendants clean the cage, and they took out the rats that started scampering on them. They seemed to feel affection towards the creatures while we were shuddering - couldn't understand it until we had our own. They are not the true rats of the wild, but bred for this tameness.

Um, Czerny. I have the book that was passed on from a relative when I was young and is dated 1912. The studies are musical and expressive. That is why comments in PW surprised me so much. Could it be that these days different studies are being chosen from that vast collection?

Hence my original question. I suspect that his "musical" music is unjustly neglected because of his vast army of learning pieces, and I'm beginning to suspect that his learning pieces are of more value than I previously thought.

Andromaque:
There are two means of refuge from the misery of life: music and cats.
--Albert Schweitzer

I have four cats at the moment, although I have have had as many as nine. All either strays who came to stay or rescues from the animal shelter. I once had a little black cat named Scriabin.

The thing about rats is that they have a tendency to go feral if you don't pay attention to them for a stretch. I kind of like mice, but my pet of choice if I had one right now would be a cat, so no go there.

Well it is important to keep in mind that a domesticated rat (and the more generations, the better) is an entirely different animal from those horrid things I have occasionally encountered in dark alleys at night. Ecch! Interestingly, the Province of Alberta has outlawed pet rats... the wild variety have in the past been so destructive of their agricultural economy that Alberta won't deal with them in any form.

'a bit' is, well, a bit of an understatement. I would like to mention that Czerny's 'Daily Exercises' Op. 337 (uploaded at IMSLP) consist mainly of 5-finger type exercises which could make a decent alternative to Hanon, Dohnanyi, Joseffy, Tausig, etc. They aren't difficult and quite useful for warm-ups.

Otherwise, I find a lot of Czerny tedious (can you believe it- he even set the Mass text several times?), though I have to admit that parts of the 'School of Velocity' -and more so- 'Art of Finger Dexterity' contain some really fun music to play. Their pedagogical value can be debated, but for sheer exhilaration, they're hard to beat.

For experience in sight-reading, I cannot recommend these etudes highly enough. Beginning pianists would do well to look at Czerny's easier studies. Try to use an edition with fingering, it makes sight reading easier.

I've read that Lhévinne actually played an entire recital with only Czerny works.

I could add comments about pet rats (which I've had) and body parts cats won't eat (involving a three-legged cat I knew, which once caught a rabbit), but don't wish to contribute to the off-topic wanderings seen above.