Clementi's Sonata in B flat / Clementi and Mozart: A Pianistic Duel

Muzio Clementi (1752 - 1832)

In the first days of January 1781, the court of Vienna was dressed up (more than usual) to receive the most renowned Austrian pianist facing the most renowned non-Austrian pianist of those years.
At the invitation of the music-loving Emperor Joseph II, the Salzburg-born Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the Italian Muzio Clementi met in his salons to delight the noble audience with their improvisations and display of virtuoso technique, in order to define once and for all what kept such an exquisite audience in suspense: which of the two was the best pianist in that small world.

Muzio Clementi, pianist, composer, future publisher, and piano maker had long been established in England, where he was a celebrity. But he had yet to be heard on the continent. Four years older than Mozart, he would take the opportunity to show his skills before the court of the most glamorous empire of the time.

A draw

According to tradition, the competition was declared a draw. Though in his innermost self, Joseph II favored the grace and touché of his fellow countryman, as he would later tell a famed composer. Both musicians performed pieces of their own, then improvised on themes proposed by the audience, and sight-read scores on which they were asked to elaborate variations. At the end, Clementi accompanied Mozart on a second piano and vice versa.

Mozart gets ready

This information would be enough to satisfy us, but there was an eyewitness who allows us to go further. Giuseppe Antonio Bridi, Mozart's friend, left a chronicle of the evening. From him we know that Clementi was the first to jump into the ring, improvising a prelude. He then played a sonata, a sonata in B flat major that enchanted Mozart, to such an extent that ten years later he would use its opening theme in the overture to The Magic Flute. Clementi, who was delighted to meet Mozart that night, never forgave him for the trick.

Sonata in B flat major, opus 24 No 2 (erroneously catalogued as opus 47 in some editions).
As might be expected, the dates of composition and publication can only be estimated. However, due to Mozart's misappropriation of it in 1791 – a common misappropriation at the time – Clementi was obliged, each time he republished the sonata, to add a note that it had been written "ten years earlier" than The Magic Flute, i.e. in 1781, or a little earlier. And regarding the publication, recent studies also date it to that year, and in Vienna, which seems most wise given that the piece had been made "public" at the court of Joseph II, only a couple of months before.

Movements
Structured in the traditional Vivaldian fast-slow-fast style, the exquisite piece is part of the most correct and careful classical piano, a jewel.

00:00  Allegro con brio

04:18  Andante - quasi allegretto

08:35  Rondo - allegro assai

The superb version is by pianist Zenan Kwan, born in Hong Kong. It is an extraordinary experience to listen to it remembering that Mozart attended the same experience, more than two hundred years ago, although "live", coming from the hands of Clementi himself.