 Czerny chez Bach, où plutôt expliquant par l’exemple comment maitriser pianistiquement les arcanes du style classique. 48 Préludes et Fugues à l’imitation du Clavier bien tempéré, qui ne sont pourtant pas qu’un cahier à visée pédagogique, le virtuose introduisant dans son œuvres une mise à distance où plus d’une fois les échos de Mendelssohn, lui aussi soucieux de se référer à Bach, se font entendre. Emanuele Delucchi se garde bien d’ailleurs de céder à l’objet didactique, la poésie des timbres de son Pleyel, la légèreté de son clavier et la vitesse de répétition du mécanisme, la clarté des polyphonies, nous font entrer plus chez Czerny qui entendait épuiser les possibilités de l’instrument, que chez un Bach métamorphosé. Les inventions thématiques, le ton de grand caprice (le Prélude en si), la liberté qui retire à la forme toute raideur trouvent dans sa technique imparable qui paraissait déjà dans son cycle Godowsky pour le même éditeur, un allié pour faire avant tout de la musique, rendant justice à ce cahier foisonnant que Busoni connaissait bien et qui lui inspira une grande part de sa fascination pour Bach. (Discophilia - Artalinna.com) (Jean-Charles Hoffelé) A little-known ‘Well-Tempered Clavier’ for the 19th century in a superbly engineered new version. Long known as Beethoven’s pupil, Liszt’s teacher and the bane of countless piano students ever since as the prolific author of exercises and studies which have won foundational status in their importance for piano technique, Carl Czerny (1791-1858) is finally gaining recognition as a composer in his own right. During the 19th century, while his pupils were still alive to play them, his concertos still enjoyed a measure of familiarity and success, but Czerny’s sheer industry obscured his creative achievements: where should a listener start with a catalogue of opus numbers into the four figures? The 48 Preludes and Fugues in the present collection are as good a place to start as any, especially for anyone familiar with their obvious inspiration in the Old Testament of contrapuntal technique assembled by Bach across two volumes of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Czerny would hardly claim to live up to the Leipzig master’s probing depths of expression or originality of melodic inspiration, but his set nonetheless boasts pleasures of its own, starting with the C major Prelude which puts a rhapsodic gloss on Bach’s immortal introduction. And as early as the A minor Fugue we find a subject of notable individuality as well as the craft on Czerny’s part to carry off a five-minute fugue of many grave beauties. There are more contemporary contrapuntal devices on show, too, such as the interludes of the fugues in Nos. 14 and 22. Overall the composer takes pains to integrate the principles of High-Baroque counterpoint with the ‘galant’ style that preceded the Biedermeier in the early decades of the 19th century, making this a collection at once in and outside its time. In 2017 Emanuele Delucchi gave the first known performance of Czerny’s Op.856 in modern times, and this is only the second recording. Born in 1987 and based in Milan, he specialises in the super- virtuoso repertoire of the late-19th century, recording much-admired albums of music by Alkan, Godowsky and d’Albert. This is his fifth album for Piano Classics
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