Admired by Beethoven and famed throughout Europe as a composer, keyboard virtuoso and publisher, the Italian-born Englishman Muzio Clementi (1752–1832) has since his death suffered from a generally poor press. His cause has not been helped by Mozart never one to go over-board in his praise of feliow composers, who dismissed him after a celebrated keyboard contest as ''a mere mechanicus'', with ''not an ounce of taste or feeling''. And Clementi's output of easy teaching sonatinas has meant that many people associate him solely with schoolroom drudgery. But as his later sonatas, in particular, reveal, he was a complex and original musical personality, with a mastery of large-scale sonata structure and a surprisingly wide expressive range.
If none of the orchestral works on these three new discs reaches the intensity and formal coherence of his finest keyboard sonatas, they contain some fascinating music. Clementi wrote around 20 symphonies, of which only the six recorded here have survived. Together with three separate movements, these have been edited for performance by Pietro Spada, who also plays the solo part in Clementi's only extant piano concerto. The two earliest works here are the Op. 18 symphonies, published in London in 1787—cheerful, light-weight pieces scored for small orchestra. Haydn is, not surprisingly, the main influence, though there's an attractive individuality in the skittish minuet and gavotte-like finale of No. 1 in B flat. Both works share something of Haydn's contrapuntal fluency, though they lack his thematic memorability and his sense of movement. In his notes Spada compares the C major Piano Concerto, arranged from a solo sonata, with Beethoven's First and Second Concertos, though it's far less closely developed than they are, and far more rudimentary in its interplay between soloist and orchestra. Despite Clementi's fondness for the grandiose orchestral gesture, much of the first movement has an easy-going charm reminiscent of Mozart's Salzburg concertos, altogether more personal is the slow movement, with its dark-hued orchestral textures and expressive fioriture for the soloist.
The four symphonies on the second and third discs were probably composed between 1802 and 1810, when Clementi toured Europe on behalf of his publishing firm. All are scored for large orchestra, including trombones, and aim at the grand manner. Each of the symphonies opens with an imposing slow introduction, often, especially in No. 4, richly chromatic; and many of the movements are notable for their sudden, dramatic key shifts, powerful canonic writing and colourful scoring for wind and brass (Clementi was censured by early critics for over-using the wind). Late Haydn and early Beethoven (especially his Second Symphony) are the obvious models; indeed, two of the slow movements suggest specific movements from Haydn's ''London'' Symphonies: that in No. 2 recalls the Andante from No. 96, while the Andante cantabile from No. 4 sometimes seems like a slightly inflated paraphrase of the great Adagio from Haydn's No. 99. Here, as elsewhere, Clementi can smother his appealing but sometimes slender vein of melody in portentous rhetoric; and though his thematic and contrapuntal development is often impressive, as in the first movement of No. 4, he does at times suffer from rhythmic and harmonic inertia, and an over-reliance on sequences. Incidentally, in the Great National Symphony, No. 3, Clementi affirmed his allegiance to his adopted country by using ''God save the King'' as the basis for an inventive, if occasionally overblown, set of variations.
Uneven music, then, but intriguing and often entertaining. The Philharmonia, under the Italian conductor Francesco D'Avalos, give lively, full-blooded accounts of the symphonies, though the playing is not without its rough edges and can sound distinctly beefy in the lightly scored earlier works. Pietro Spada is a robust, technically assured soloist in the Piano Concerto, if a bit short on poetry and fantasy in the slow movement; and some uneasy ensemble between solo and orchestra suggests rehearsal time was at a premium.
The sound quality is full and atmospheric though a touch opaque, with the wind sometimes short-changed in the balance.'