 Tous les pianistes connaissent Carl Czerny, notamment pour ses nombreux recueils de morceaux d’étude. Et pour cause : Czerny, qui fut un pédagogue exceptionnel et très recherché, a consacré, et probablement sacrifié, sa vie artistique à l’enseignement. Il fut élève de Hummel, Salieri, et surtout de Beethoven, qui restera à vie son idole ; il eut Liszt au nombre de ses élèves. Pédagogue recherché, pianiste apprécié, il passa également sa vie à étudier et commenter l’oeuvre de son maître. Il composa de très nombreuses oeuvres (son catalogue en comprend presque un millier). La numéro 200 lui tenait particulièrement à coeur, et pour cette raison il choisit lui-même un nombre rond, le 300 étant une suite à cette « Introduction systématique à l’Improvisation au pianoforte ». Le principe est d’exposer les nombreuses techniques d’improvisation ayant cours au xixe siècle. Sur ce double CD, on trouve donc les 64 morceaux à visée pédagogique (la plupart durant moins d’une minute), thèmes, cadences, fugues,... intéressantes pour le pianiste mais, sans surprise, parfois fastidieuses pour le non spécialiste. Les quelques Fantaisies plus développées (d’une dizaine de minutes) mettent en lumière, par contraste, un vrai talent musical chez Czerny, que l’amoureux du piano prendra grand plaisir à (re)-découvrir. (Walter Appel) And once again, now for the third time, Kolja Lessing, one of the most versatile musicians of our times, dedicates himself to the multifaceted composer Carl Czerny and specifically to his Systematische Anleitung zum Fantasieren auf dem Pianoforte op. 200 (Systematic Introduction to Improvisation on the Pianoforte). »If a finely written musical work can be compared to a noble architectural edifice in which symmetry must predominate, then a successful fantasy is a beautiful English garden, seemingly without rules but brimming with surprising variety and intelligibly, meaningfully, and planfully executed.« It was with this poetic comparison that Czerny, writing in the introduction to his Anleitung zum Fantasieren, characterized the nature of improvisation, contrasting it with a composition elaborated in writing. It is scarcely surprising that Czerny, quite early marked by many years of the closest contact with his mentor Beethoven and his unique art of improvisation, presented this compendium in 1829 in his effort to grasp music encyclopedically. As an instructive work, it systematizes all the different kinds of improvisation then in use and illustrates them with numerous models, often ones honed with the finest artistry. In his compendium Czerny addressed the knowledgeable, technically uncommonly well-versed player. In his accompanying texts he refers to models that at the time were almost completely unknown such as Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Art of Fugue, to exemplary works by his contemporaries Beethoven, Clementi, Hummel, and Moscheles, and even to his own publications in respect of each improvisational genre. It is thus that Czerny’s op. 200 offers fascinating insights into the musical practice of the early nineteenth century at the crossroads between Classicism and Romanticism – while he himself already belongs to the Romantic period by virtue of his encyclopedic thought bringing together all the epochs of music history.
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