The project of recording all of Muzio Clementi's sonatas is not a small one, there being around 70 sonatas for keyboard alone and several more with optional accompaniment by other instruments. Versatile pianist Howard Shelley's first volume on Hyperion of the solo sonatas is a great beginning to his series, which should run to 12 full discs (in six releases). Shelley's version on a modern piano complements the series by Costantino Mastroprimiano on Brilliant performed on a fortepiano. (Pietro Spada's recordings on Arts, while exhaustive and thoroughly researched, can be rather workmanlike in execution.) Both series are covering the material in roughly chronological order, allowing listeners a chance to hear how Clementi's writing developed as he matured and as music in general moved from the Classical era to the Romantic. This doesn't necessarily mean his compositions became more complex or difficult to perform. Clementi frequently wrote for particular students of his and would match the music to the skills of the performer. But even hearing the youthful sonatas of Op. 1 and Op. 2 on disc 1 here, all in major keys and most in just two movements, and then the Op. 7 and Op. 8 sonatas on disc 2, there is a noticeable difference in style and depth of character. The earlier ones tend to be more graceful, more ornamented, and more dance-like, reflecting the legacy of harpsichord music at a time when the piano was still just making its way into the marketplace. Those of Op. 7 and Op. 8 are in three movements, with contrasting character and keys between movements, and the beginnings of a heroic sweep like would be found in Beethoven. Clementi's writing is still very upbeat and positive, not straying into suspenseful or brooding minor keys for long, and Shelley presents almost all of it as just as lithe and pleasantly tuneful as the early sonatas. All three of the Op. 8 sonatas follow a particular pattern of a cantabile, relatively quiet middle movement flanked by the faster, more vivid outer movements, always one of which could be frenzied if not played as smoothly and effortlessly as Shelley does. There is no doubt that although these later sonatas were published as being for the harpsichord or pianoforte (Clementi trying to make a sale where he could), they are meant to be performed on an instrument that would allow much greater expression than that of a harpsichord. Shelley concludes the volume with a sonata Clementi wrote when he was just 13. It is more obviously suitable for either instrument, with characteristics of an easier Haydn or Mozart sonata. The recording's sound and the notes included are no less than what people have come to expect from Hyperion over the years. In every way, this set is a great beginning to the series, and thanks are owed to Shelley and Hyperion for giving Clementi and his sonatas the respect shown so often to other great keyboard composers, revealing him to be much more than a salesman and a composer of didactic music. by Patsy Morita
