With a European reputation second only to Haydn’s during his lifetime, Muzio Clementi was highly regarded by Beethoven as a composer and his impact on...

With a European reputation second only to Haydn’s during his lifetime, Muzio Clementi was highly regarded by Beethoven as a composer and his impact on music in general and the piano in particular as a performer, publisher, and innovator cannot be ignored. With its cadenzas and dazzling virtuoso display, the Sonata Op. 33, No. 3 has the expressive range of a piano concerto, including an aria-like Adagio worthy of Mozart’s Vienna. Clementi was noted for his technical brilliance with runs in thirds, a hallmark found in the Op. 25 sonata alongside surprisingly operatic pauses, and a captivatingly lucid style of writing that always sounds freshly minted. Stefan Chaplikov made his concert debut in Sofia at the age of eleven. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Michell Beroff and was a Rebanks Family Fellow at The Glenn Gould School under the tutelage of John Perry. He was awarded an Artist Diploma at Yale School of Music, and is now a doctoral student in Leon Fleisher’s studio at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.