Piano Forum

All I really meant was that Czerny was obviously a PEDAGOGICAL genius. I'm only a student-level pianist myself, but I have had many years of experience of studying other instruments, music theory, the history of Western music, composition, etc. In the past few weeks I have glanced over a lot of Czerny, and I see why he's never gone out of print. He offers one reliable way to learn basic, 'orthodox' European pianism from the ground up. He is a safe, proven, hugely and historically endorsed, time-tested part of a conventional and traditional pianistic education.

Those words above in italics may put you off, depending on your temperament. But here are some things to consider: Charlie Parker, along with many other of the most radically original (some would even say creatively destructive) anti-conventional musicians of the past century, spent hundreds of hours of his apprenticeship practicing boring old scales, arpeggios, and 'conventional' exercises and studies. Second, remember the reply of the great Oscar Peterson to the question of how he developed his astonishing speed and technique: "Czerny, Czerny, Czerny!"

Nobody has ever successfully accused Peterson of being traditional, boring, and conventional, and he never uttered a word against Czerny. Clearly he did a truckload of Czerny as a child, and his opinion was obviously that Czerny was instrumental in helping him unleash his true musical self. (This is the kind of endorsement that makes me feel secure.)

Here are a few more notable Czerny fans:

Mcoy Tyner: "...when I was young, I did practice scales a lot and a few compositions….I did use Hanon, Czerny, and Macfarren, which are all fine.”
Toshiko Akiyoshi:  “You start like anyone else: Bach, Hanon, Czerny.”
Igor Stravinsky -- this composer regularly practiced Czerny throughout his career (he was a highly accomplished pianist)
Sergei Rachmaninoff -- apparently enjoyed practicing Czerny throughout his lifetime

But the problem is that there is too much Czerny; his compositions, including the pedagogical ones, number over a thousand. Nobody today would seriously advocate learning ALL of his piano-teaching stuff. So which to select? Without a proper teacher, this is a serious problem.

Elsewhere in this forum, someone pasted a list of selections from op. 599, apparently taken from a Chinese website which discussed this matter. Let us hope that  some expert thought went into this:

19、20、22、26、27、36、38、40、33、30、29、34、47、61、44、41、49、51、45、55、56、60、65、68、66、69、54、70、71、72、73、82、80、74、75 and 90-100.

Also, there is a student-oriented selection of Czerny studies by a recognized authority, Heinrich Germer, who died a half-century after Czerny. There are four volumes, and I don't know how to obtain the whole set; but the first two volumes may be freely downloaded: https://archive.org/details/ausgewahlteklavi12czer/page/n2