Carl Czerny was born in Vienna’s Leopoldstadt district in 1791. He made his public debut age nine and the following year went on to study with Beethoven (who he adored). Neither as a performer nor as a composer was he particularly self-promotional, yet he and his music were well-liked and popular in his day. As a teacher, his pupils included both Thalberg and Liszt, the latter of whom he introduced to Beethoven according to a famous story. 

There can be only two good reasons why Czerny isn’t better known. First, he composed over 1000 works, making it difficult to know where to start (we’ll look at his Op. 650 later). Second, he devised the kinds of technical exercises that made him the bane of many a lazy 19th-century piano student and earned him an unfair reputation as a tiresome pedagogue.

It’s a pity, as his enjoyable music is finely crafted, ranging from piano sonatas, études, nocturnes, and fashionable arrangements of opera themes, to sacred choral music, songs, symphonies, concertos and string quartets. Much of it remains unknown and unpublished. Fortunately, Sydney-born virtuoso Rosemary Tuck is on a...