1 Allegro moderato
2 Adagio
3 Finale: Presto

Joseph Haydn never aspired to be a keyboard virtuoso.  He confessed that he was 'no wizard', and yet he was clearly a highly competent player – 'a living keyboard', as he described himself. Every morning he would begin his day by trying out new ideas on the harpsichord, or later on, the recently-invented fortepiano.

Just as he transformed the string quartet from a lightweight diversion into one of the central planks of the chamber music repertoire, so he took the largely amateur, domestic genre which was the early Classical keyboard sonata, and proceeded to mould it over a working lifetime into a serious medium capable of great emotional profundity and requiring a professional level of technical competence. His 60 or so keyboard sonatas, the earlier ones for harpsichord, the later ones exploiting the dynamic and tonal qualities of the fortepiano, encapsulate half a century of musical evolution passing through the hands of one pioneering genius.

This sonata in A-flat major belongs to a group of early works, composed in the later 1760s, which bore the alternative title of 'Divertimento', and were primarily intended for Haydn’s pupils, mostly wealthy young Viennese women.

The prevailing mood of this Sonata is graceful and lyrical. Each of its three movements is in a version of sonata form. The opening theme of the first, with its delicate ornamentation and expressive appoggiaturas, is typical of the fashionable 'sentimental' style popularised at the court of Frederick the Great. The almost improvisational development section wanders through several remote keys. The contrapuntal peregrinations of the eloquent central Adagio recall the work of J S Bach; while the lively finale concludes with a shower of scales over a rising bass line.

1 Allegro maestoso e con sentimento
2 Adagio sostenuto e patetico
3 Allegro vivace

Muzio Clementi was one of the most influential pianists of his day. Born in Rome, his exceptional musical talent was spotted by a wealthy English nobleman on the Grand Tour, and he was taken to England aged 14 and raised in Dorset, where he spent eight hours a day practising the keyboard and studying. He later settled in London, from where he toured Europe (at one point engaging in a keyboard contest with his slightly younger contemporary Mozart at the Viennese court), and made a good living playing, teaching and conducting. He also ventured into music publishing, and later on became a highly successful piano manufacturer.  

Known as 'the Father of the Piano', Clementi composed over 100 piano sonatas, much admired by Beethoven for their 'lovely, pleasing, original, fresh melodies'. These qualities are evident in Op 50 No 1, published in 1821 as the first of a final set of three sonatas.  The expressive, sentimental  style cultivated 50 years earlier by Haydn dominates the opening Allegro maestoso, while the central Adagio sostenuto encloses a two-voiced canon at its core. The sparkling Finale explores the upper reaches of the newly expanded keyboard.

1 Allegro energico
2 Allegro agitato assai
3 Andante, quasi marcia funebre
4 Allegro con bravura

Clementi’s piano sonatas were held in high regard by Beethoven’s best-known pupil, Carl Czerny, an influential teacher in his own right. He used them to instruct his own most famous pupil, Franz Liszt, who became Europe’s foremost piano virtuoso. Liszt’s success was such that by his mid-30s he was able to retire from the concert platform to devote himself both to conducting and composition, in which he proved a pioneer of experimental musical form.

His Grosses Konzertsolo – a large-scale, virtuosic piece for solo piano in the style of a single-movement concerto, was published in 1851. Liszt tinkered with it for years, recasting it for two pianos, and evidently considering a full-scale version with orchestra. He originally conceived the piece as a huge three-part sonata-allegro movement, but then inserted a slow middle section, marked Andante sostenuto. The principle of thematic transformation, which Liszt later used so successfully in the B minor Sonata, binds the four sections together.

^{Notes by Wendy Thompson}