Muzio Clementi was born four years before Mozart and outlived Beethoven by five. Thus this Italian pianist and composer helped fashion the entire Classical era in music. However, his pedagogical tour de force, the “Gradus ad parnassum”, has tended to negatively influence the esteem he enjoyed as an artist, something that our first volume of Clementi’s piano sonatas should help to rectify. This selection of ten moderately difficult to difficult works allows a glimpse into Clementi’s sonata workshop between 1768 and 1785. His predilection for the finer points of part-writing and contrapuntal art blend here with a formal and dignified classicism. Our carefully revised Urtext edition is based on the first versions of the pieces, published in the 1770s and 1780s.
