Why did Mozart call Clementi a "charlatan?" One clue can be heard in this sonatina, a clue that also addresses the age old issue of flashy display versus good taste. Mozart, brilliant as he was, believed in the virtues of restraint and taste in music. His displays of pianistic skill were always tempered by compositional considerations concerning balance, phrasing, emotional restraint, and other qualities that makes classical music "classical."
Along comes Mr. Muzio Clementi, a successful composer-performer with a reputation stretching across Europe, cozy with the court elite whose favors often eluded unpredictable Mozart. Clementi's sonatas for the new and popular pianoforte were heavy on flash, and just artsy enough to gain palace entrance. To Mozart they must have seemed like a well-groomed shyster, gaining access to the King with bribes at the gate while Mozart's own works, paragons of integrity in the compositional art, waited outside in the mud and rain. His music was as different from Mozart's, in the ears of the day, as Hendrix is from Chet Atkins today.
In Clementi's defense, he was considered by Beethoven and others to be the first complete master of the pianoforte, with a style of composition best suited to it, not the old-fashioned harpsichord. Remembering that the pianoforte was capable of new dramatic variations in loudness and tone, it's easy to see how Clementi's flash was appropriate for the instrument, but excessive to those whose tastes were shaped by the more limited harpsichord. Listen to this Clementi "Sonatina" and see if you can hear harbingers of Liszt and other keyboard virtuosos to come.
