The world is divided into two groups – one gigantic, whose members have never heard of Carl Czerny, and one infinitesimally small, whose inhabitants have indeed made his acquaintance but loathe him passionately. Unfortunately for Czerny’s posthumous reputation, this latter enclave includes virtually all music critics.

This is not because my esteemed colleagues are at all familiar with the compositions of Czerny – they are, by and large, totally ignorant of them – but rather because he is responsible for a vast number of fingering exercises whose mastery is essential for entry into the elite circle of classical pianism. Since writers about music are almost exclusively failed wunderkinder of the keyboard, their collective memory of Czerny is a tortured one. Anyone familiar with the fanciful piano piece “Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum” by Debussy, which expresses not only the crushing boredom of practice but also the exhilaration of rebellion against it, can relate to a child’s deep frustration at the very mention of a well-published keyboard pedagogue’s name.

My own rudimentary piano training having been strictly for purposes of learning theory, I am blissfully free of anti-Czerny baggage, and so I approached the American Symphony Orchestra Sunday afternoon performance with great curiosity and expectation. Even for Leon Botstein, the works on this program were obscure, some not even existing in any form except manuscript and requiring many hours of transcription by orchestral library staff, with the assistance of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde of Vienna, in order to be realized in concert.

No one actually knows how many world premieres were on Sunday afternoon’s program, but four works were presented and most probably three of them were embarking on maiden voyages. The discovery of the show was that Czerny was actually quite an accomplished composer, at least when freed from the virtuosic tendencies he exhibited at the piano.

The first piece, for small chorus and orchestra, was a setting of Psalm 130. There was a rather fascinating dichotomy to this music: The orchestral parts were light and airy, almost Mendelssohnian, while the intonations of the choir were decidedly more serious and weighty. The Concert Chorale of New York was deft, nimble, and remarkable for its clarity (though perhaps this impression had something to do with my displeasure at being bruited and overwhelmed by three complete choral societies at Thursday night’s rendition of the Britten War Requiem at Carnegie Hall).

Following was an even more exciting setting of Schiller’s “Die Macht des Gesanges,” a gloriously complex exercise in part writing that built to a Brahmsian climax. Again Mr. Botstein had his forces balanced properly, the effect stirring and of high import. This was not just a concert; this was an event in musicological history, and the American Symphony bestowed upon it the gravitas that it deserved.

When Czerny sat down at the piano, however, the results could be much less satisfying. Glenn Gould’s description of the Beethoven Violin Concerto as “a lot of guts and one good tune” is equally apt for Czerny’s Haydn Variations for Piano and Orchestra – except that the tune, in this case, was written by Haydn, not Czerny. The theme itself was later appropriated by the Nazis, and so the intrusion of “Deutschland uber alles” into our inner ears made the piece a bit hard to love.

Further, Czerny really only gilds the lily: The “variations” are little more than florid filigree, the melody broken into arpeggiated passages of various tempi and ornamented with ruffles and flourishes of the pianistic kind. It was apparent from this piece of overstuffed embroidery that Czerny was indeed the teacher of Liszt. It was this very virtuosity that earned Czerny the scorn of his contemporaries, prompting that greatest of all music critics, Robert Schumann, to write about two of its most outrageous practitioners that “before Herz and Czerny I doff my hat – to ask that they trouble me no more.”

Yet this performance was so spectacular as to make even the specious fascinating. Piers Lane is a bit of a piano teacher himself – appearing on British television in a long-running series about the piano – and his approach to the piece was unabashedly virtuosic. He fingered the plethora of notes with seeming ease. Confident and regal, he epitomized the leonine soloist, his large hands exhibiting a steeliness that served this music well. Although he could be tender in spots, the score primarily called for bravado, and he delivered in spades. Even this piece was perhaps being given its world premiere, as only a version for piano and string quartet has seen the light of day in recent memory. Czerny’s youthful Second Symphony rounded out the program.

The American Symphony Orchestra has worked very hard to reach this level of performance excellence. The next time you find yourself at Avery Fisher Hall listening to the local band fumbling its way through their 500th realization of the “Italian” Symphony, take a look at the ASO schedule. There just might be something a little more intriguing.

***

“Cavalleria Rusticana,” which finished its Fall repertory schedule on Saturday, is not all about that famous intermezzo, but it is a good place to start. Conductor Dennis Russell Davies’s experience as an instrumental expert stood him in good stead; he paused just before this juncture and beamed with delight at his exceptional orchestral forces, as if to say that this was indeed the big moment, and we should make the most of it.

Czech soprano Eva Urbanova led a strong cast in this naturalistic production. She has a powerful voice, gritty and impressive in the lower register, throaty and sympathetic in the upper. Her entire performance was played at the very edge of earthy hysteria; if Anna Magnani could sing, she would have been this type of Santuzza. Jane Shaulis was also excellent as Mama Lucia. Jossie Perez as Lola delivered an object lesson in how to make a small role big, her “fior di giaggiolo” the highlight of the entire show.

On the night I caught it, the second half of the double bill started out well enough, with the highly emotive Juan Pons as Tonio delivering a powerful introduction, but once the curtain went up, the anticipation quickly fizzled. Daniela Dessi was often lost in intonational limbo, making rather pathetic stabs at high notes that almost never produced satisfactory results. The orange lighting was so over the top that the landscape reminded more of the movie Dune than anything one might actually encounter in Italy.

Although we may wait for the intermezzo from Cav, we only come to Pag for the ultimate moment in all of opera. This particular “vesti la giubba” was laughable all right, but not in the way that the composer intended. When the curtain came down for the end of Act 1, la commedia was already finita.

So this was a bit of a strange marriage, but worth seeing for the fine “Cavalleria Rusticana.” Unfortunately, after such a solid performance in the first half, these particular pagliacci really just sang like a bunch of clowns.