A torchbearer at Beethoven’s funeral, Beethoven’s pupil, friend and protégé Carl Czerny is almost forgotten today except as the author of educational piano pieces and the author of a long-influential piano method. But like his peers among Beethoven’s circle of friends, notably Ferdinand Ries and Ignaz Moscheles, Czerny was one of those who carried on the torch of the late-classical style into the early years of the age of Romanticism, and made a distinctive contribution through his own creative work.

He was a gigantically prolific composer, and much of his huge output has remained unknown since his death. Yet there is plenty in it that is worth searching out, and as a virtuoso pianist his most substantial piano works, such as the sonatas, give him a definite claim to fame. Despite teaching at times as many as ten hours a day, Czerny managed to compose an immense amount of music, eventually totalling over 1,000 works. It is said that he composed so prolifically that he worked on several compositions simultaneously. He would set up a series of desks in his workroom, each with a different work in progress on it. Czerny would start with one, fill two facing pages, go to the next desk, fill two pages of that work, and so on. By the time he returned to the first desk, the ink would have dried, he could turn the page, and go on.