Anton Felix Schindler on Carl Czerny

“Carl Czerny, the nephew’s teacher, was much less devoted to these [Clementi’s] sonatas, and for this and other pedagogical reasons a disagreement arose between him and Beethoven, as a result of which lessons with him were discontinued. He was replaced by Joseph Czerny, a much better teacher than Carl… Under the new teacher’s guidance the nephew advanced along the road prescribed by his uncle.”

“Czerny very frequently uses the words ‘humor, humorous, fantastic’ to describe the character of certain movements without even so much as hinting how such a character is to be presented. In one place he does say, “By the successful mastery of all mechanical difficulties.” But if that were all that was required, we would nowadays have hundreds of outstanding Beethoven pianists.”

“It is, however, part of the unfortunate nature of the virtuoso [Czerny] that he demeans all these hard-won accomplishments and wishes to substitute technique for spirit.”