The Viennese-born Carl Czerny (1791-1857) is best remembered for his countless pedagogical studies, hundreds and hundreds of them. But his astonishing fecundity - his opus numbers go up to 861, and there is much more music than that - has obscured the fact that he was an important composer in his own right, his works forming a link between Beethoven (his teacher) and Liszt (his student), between the Classical and Romantic eras. The four pieces recorded here - two for two pianos and two for piano four-hands - were intended to impress the salons of Biedermeier Vienna. The titles of three of them contain the word 'brillant': Czerny's intention was to dazzle and entertain, and that's just what this sparkling music does.
