Something of a Clementi ‘renaissance’ began early this century, with the Opera Omnia team in Italy publishing their first numbers of a sixty-volume urtext edition of the composer's complete works (Bologna: Ut Orpheus, 2000–). Further momentum has gathered through a number of Clementi-only CD releases (a couple a year on average since about 2002). It has now become easy to access recordings of Clementi's piano sonatas, but not all performers show equal degrees of commitment to this challenging repertoire. Simon Conning's debut recording stands out from the crowd, portraying Clementi's piano music at its sophisticated best. Conning's selection is telling, comprising mostly works taken from Clementi's middle and late periods. According to Leon Plantinga, such works are characterized by a ‘leisurely construction, far-flung harmonic palette, and extravagant chromaticism’, in addition to rich sonorities and abundant contrapuntal textures (Leon Plantinga, ‘Clementi “et ses trois styles”’, in Muzio Clementi: cosmopolita della musica, ed. Richard Bösel and Massimiliano Sala (Bologna: Ut Orpheus, 2004), 15–22).

The Toccata Op. 11 is the exception here – an early showpiece that frustrated Mozart during his pianistic duel with Clementi in 1781. Conning shows mastery of this extremely perilous work, crammed with rapid double thirds and sixths. He follows Clementi's legato slurs accurately and resists the temptation to lighten the articulation in the manner of a Scarlattian toccata; indeed, this piece represents one potent example of early legato technique, and there is no doubt that such legato would have played a role in so impressing Mozart.

Mozart particularly disliked Clementi's ‘Prestissimo alla breve’ marking in the Toccata, which he heard as a mere ‘Allegro in 4/4 time’ under Clementi's hands (Emily Anderson, ed., The Letters of Mozart and His Family (London: Macmillan, 1966), 850). Interestingly, Clementi's 1804 revision of the work alters the metre to 4/4, with quavers often beamed six by six. This is what is heard in Conning's performance, and it is unlikely that Clementi's own tempo would have been much faster – Prestissimo suggests perhaps to play as fast as possible rather than to abide by an absolute tempo scale. Conning also performs the Presto of the two-movement Sonata Op. 33 No. 2 in F major (of 1794) in a grand and lively manner, thus showing that, despite appearances to the contrary, this work belongs nowhere close to the sonatina genre.

Elsewhere, Conning's choice of tempos in fast movements is nevertheless questionably conservative at times. In the opening movement of the Sonata Op. 50 No. 1 in A major, Conning's performance sits comfortably around ‘crotchet equals 88–92’, where Clementi wrote ‘minim equals 58’ (thus ‘crotchet equals 116’, almost 30 per cent faster). Perhaps in this case Clementi's tempo ‘Allegro maestoso e con sentimento’ led the performer to undermine the ‘allegro’ component significantly in favour of highlighting the ‘maestoso’ character of the movement. Nonetheless, if we are to follow Clementi's tempo scale listed in his Introduction to the Art of Playing on the Piano Forte, ‘maestoso’ is faster than even allegretto or moderato (London: Clementi, 1801; facsimile edition, ed. Sandra Rosenblum, New York: Da Capo, 1974).

Another contentious tempo choice is that of the Allegro in the first movement of the Sonata Op. 40 No. 3 in D. Here the section starts with crotchet movement that accelerates into a regular, semiquaver-rich exposition. Conning's tempo is roughly ‘crotchet equals 120’, which in principle fits the ‘Allegro’ label rather well. But the semiquavers sound somewhat laboured and the crotchet beats over-accentuated, as if the performer is emphatically reminding us, bar after bar, that this movement is written in 4/4 metre, not 2/2. (Contrast Nikolai Demidenko on Hyperion CDA66808 (1995), in which this section is heard distinctly – and mistakenly – as alla breve.) Such an approach appears to undermine the brilliance of the movement, though the contrapuntal elements in the development section are projected with persuasion. This is a point in the movement where Conning's tempo choice becomes convincing.

Such an observation, indeed, presents a challenge to mainstream thinking that tempo should remain unaltered in the performance of a movement from the classical repertoire (see Richard Taruskin, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 235–260 (‘Resisting the Ninth’)). Admittedly, there are no known reports of Clementi altering tempos within a given movement during performance. However, Beethoven's assumption of such tempo changes is evidenced in the oft-quoted autograph of his song ‘Nord oder Süd’, in which he wrote: ‘100 according to Malzel['s metronome], but this is valid only for the first measures, since feeling also has its beat, which however cannot be expressed completely by this tempo (namely, 100)’ (Adolph Bernard Marx, Anleitung zum Vortrag Beethovenscher Klavierwerke (Berlin, 1875), 69; translated in Kenneth Drake, The Beethoven Sonatas and the Creative Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 33). Artur Schnabel's editions of the Beethoven sonatas, with their many suggested metronome marks (as many as thirty-eight in the first movement of the Sonata Op. 57 (‘Appassionata’) alone) are among several testimonies to the effect that tempo changes may occur quite naturally throughout Beethoven sonata movements, and indeed in classical keyboard repertoire in general. Following this line of thought, a listener or performer of Clementi's time may not have considered Conning's tempo in the development of Clementi's Op. 50 No. 1 incompatible with a faster start to the Allegro.

In Clementi performance, however, tempo and rhythmic flexibility pose perhaps greater challenges than in Beethoven performance. Kathleen Dale observes, in her article on Clementi's music, that Clementi ‘was often deficient in rhythmic enterprise’ (Dale, ‘Hours with Muzio Clementi’, Music & Letters 24/3 (1943), 150). Such a judgment begs the question of how exactly one might define ‘rhythmic enterprise’. One may observe that Clementi generally makes less use of syncopation than Mozart, Haydn or Beethoven, and that his thematic material often follows the metric ‘grid’ quite strictly, yet his melodic lines are inherently flexible and imbued with a sense of ‘breath’ and singing quality that may be considered at odds with notions of regularity or strictness – the latter judgements still prevailing in mainstream evaluations of Clementi's music nowadays. Clementi's large-scale piano works, such as those featured in this recording, present a peculiar performance conundrum: notation that may at times look somewhat square and yet represents sophisticated, often spirited and highly lively music. In fact, it is easy to be deceived by the appearance of some Clementi scores, as one can gather from Carl Czerny's account that the study of Clementi's sonatas ‘will always remain the best school for the pianist, if one knows how to study them in his spirit’ (Czerny, ‘Recollections from My Life’, trans. Ernest Sanders, The Musical Quarterly 42/3 (1956), 315; the italics are Czerny’s). This ‘spirit’ may well relate to the vivid and rather unique paradox between freedom and restraint inherent in Clementi's best sonatas – making these arguably even more challenging in this respect than the masterpieces of the Viennese ‘trinity’.

What we do know is that Clementi would have expected some kind of rubato around markings such as dolce and con espressione:

Furthermore, Clementi was described in 1784 as playing ‘with a continual swelling and receding with unwritten lentando and rubando that it would be impossible to express on paper’ (anonymous, ‘Nachricht von dem Clavierspieler Clementi’, Magazin der Musik 2 (1784), 365–373; quoted in Plantinga, Clementi: His Life and Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), 72).

Such constant ‘micro-shaping’ is often what is missed by modern-day performers of Clementi's piano music, so strong is the conditioning to ‘classicize’ his music into a straight-jacketed, steady (and rather uneventful) presentation of his works. Conning's recording defies the trend, showing at every corner of a phrase how flexible and moving the music can be. The slow movements of the Sonatas Op. 40 No. 3 and Op. 50 No. 1 are cases in point, with their broad and richly projected, almost Brahmsian legato as well as highly expressive vocal right-hand lines and left-hand countermelodies or imitative lines. There is no doubt that Clementi was a visionary pianist, making the change to a pervasive legato style an unequivocal affair – arguably the most significant evolutionary leap in piano technique ever to have been made. It is perhaps ironic, then, that so many recordings undermine this quality of his music.

It takes commitment to perform Clementi convincingly, and Conning certainly rises to the challenge. This is a pianist who takes Clementi seriously and plays his music with deep insight, showing that Clementi's large-scale sonatas may be considered among the most successful works of their era. Conning does not belong to the publicized world of competition pianists. Some may find the legendary (but very few) Clementi recordings by Gilels, Michelangeli or Horowitz more satisfyingly masterful. But Conning is a highly intelligent and perceptive performer, armed with pianistic abilities that allow him to project the music with integrity, thoughtfulness and conviction. Perhaps the over-competitive climate that we live in calls more than ever for such pianists with unique sensibilities. And perhaps this is what Clementi's music also needs most.