The main reason for me to record these pieces, is simply because I like them! I like playing them and I like listening to them. The joy of playing this uncomplicated, fun, uplifting music comes very much through in this recording, I think. It was great fun to prepare these pieces, it was thrilling to record them, and still, when I listen to the recording, I get in a very good mood. The recording was done in one afternoon and very much like a concert, without second takes and virtually no editing - I wanted the recording to be as fresh as possible. Although these pieces are thought of as being easy, a lot of them are actually quite challenging like the 4th and the 5th sonatinas by Clementi.

While preparing for the recording, I inevitably had to think back to my childhood when I was an aspiring, young piano student. My teacher had me play the sonatinas by Clementi and I got to know these very well. Most of them I liked very much, but not everyone! The worst one was actually the second: I think I had to play it for a long time - maybe too long - before I got it right, because I remember starting to dislike the piece. Some of those feelings might still be there: it was actually the only piece in the recording that needed some editing...

As a piano student, I never played the sonatinas by the other composers; after Clementi it was straight to the sonatas by Beethoven. Of course, I had heard some of the movements on student concerts, but I was very thankful to get to know them by teaching them myself to my own pupils.

Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812), Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) and Friedrich Daniel Rudolf Kuhlau (1786-1832), as they are pictured on the beautiful drawing by the dutch artist G. Ong, lived all in the same period, the early days of the piano and all three had great influence on the music of later pianists. These composers led interesting and often adventurous lives: Clementi was bought by an Englishman from his parents and moved from Italy to London, where he had great artistically and financial succes; Dussek was accused of involvement in a plot to assassinate Catherine the Great from Russia, and had to flee from St. Petersburg; and Kuhlau, who lost his right eye when he was 7-years old, fled to Danmark after Napoleon invaded Germany!

These composers were also great teachers and wrote a lot of music for educational purposes. One reason why this music is still popular, almost two hundred years later, is because of the high quality of the music. The fast movements are fun to play and to listen to, the slower movements are very beautiful. Even though they are written for children, some of the (especially) slower movements show real depth and could have been used in music for adults.

I hope that you will enjoy listening to this music as much as I enjoyed playing it!

Clementi, Dussek, Kuhlau - Sonatinas For Piano