![]() ![]() As indicated by its title, Opus 299 is devoted to developing the utmost speed in all types of passage work, from rapid five-finger patterns of every description, through scale and arpeggio playing, up to wide stretches, leaps and broken octaves. The peak is finally reached at “The Art of Finger Dexterity,” Opus 740, which to me is the crowning achievement both musically and technically.Īs a result of recording the forty etudes of “The School of Velocity,” Opus 299, I can see how masterly this work is. ![]() ![]() The huge, sprawling, underwater base contains beginning studies like “The Little Pianist,” “One Hundred Progressive studies without Octaves,” “125 Exercises in Passage Playing,” or “110 Easy and Progressive Exercises.” On a higher level than these are the more difficult, short, repetitive exercise like the “Eight Measure Exercises” and “The School of the Virtuoso.” From here the slopes lead more sharply upward through octave, legato and staccato studies and “The School of the Left Hand,” to the dizzier heights of “The School of Velocity,” Opus 299. The tremendous bulk of Czerny’s composition which consists solely of etudes (discounting, that is, his solo pieces for piano in almost every known form), seems to me to assume something like the shape of an iceberg. ![]()
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