Hummel: Piano Music - Hans Kann, fortepiano

Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Piano Music liner notes

During his lifetime Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) was a celebrity throughout Europe. As a young boy his piano playing had so impressed Mozart that the great musician took him as a student and insisted that he should live in his house, which Hummel did for two years. He grew up to be perhaps the finest pianist of his generation and a gifted and successful composer many preferred to Beethoven. His music influenced Schumann and Chopin, especially the latter's piano concertos. Schumann once said that the F-sharp minor sonata, Op. 81, was "alone enough to make Hummel immortal''. Yet even before his death his reputation had begun to plummet. This probably resulted from his cultivation of a facile, brilliant style that left him open to the criticism of being superficial and without warmth or passion. Indeed Gerber, writing in 1812, remarked that even as a ten-year old prodigy Hummel was criticized for playing without "feeling or soulfulness", although every other pianistic perfection was granted him. (No wonder he hated critics.)