Open Rehearsal July 27

Tuesday, July 27 · 2:30-3:30 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL

This event will be live streamed.

MOZART
(1756-1791)

Fantasy in F Minor for Two Pianos, K.608 (arr. Busoni)

Inon Barnatan, Joyce Yang, pianos

Program note by Eric Bromberger

Fantasy in F Minor for Two Pianos, K.608 (arr. Busoni)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg
Died December 5, 1791, Vienna
Composed: 1791
Approximate Duration: 12 minutes

In the summer of 1790 Mozart took on an unusual commission. Count Deym, a collector of curiosities, commissioned a piece for a combination mechanical organ and clock. It was to commemorate the recently-deceased Field Marshal Laudon, a hero of Austria’s war with Turkey; Count Deym wanted the music for the unveiling of a statue of Laudon in his wax museum. Mozart was not interested. He did not like the shrill sound of the tiny mechanical organ, and he had little enthusiasm about the project, but he needed the money. He made his feelings clear in a letter to his wife:

I now made up my mind to compose at once the Adagio for the watchmaker and then to slip a few ducats into the hand of my dear little wife. And this I have done; but as it is a kind of composition which I detest, I have unfortunately not been able to finish it. I compose a bit of it every day—but I have to break off now and then, as I get bored. And indeed I would give the whole thing up, if I had not such an important reason to go on with it. But I still hope that I shall be able to force myself gradually to finish it. If it were for a large instrument and the work would sound like an organ piece, then I might get some fun out of it. But, as it is, the works consist solely of little pipes, which sound too high pitched and too childish for my taste.

Mozart finally did complete this piece, an Adagio and Allegro for Mechanical Organ, and must have thought himself well quit of Count Deym and his mechanical organ. But the following year, the Count commissioned another piece from Mozart for this instrument, and on March 3, 1791 Mozart composed a piece he called Orgelstück für eine Uhr: “Organ Piece for a Clock.” And this music is extraordinary.

It may be a mark of how far Mozart had fallen that he felt he had to accept commissions for a mechanical organ, but it is also a mark of Mozart that he could turn around and write such astonishing and powerful music for a toy instrument. This music goes under the title Fantasy in F Minor today, when it is usually played by the massive organ that it demands. “Fantasy” is a title that more readily suggests Bach than a high-classical composer, and in fact at many points this Fantasy does suggest the music of that earlier master. It opens with a strident, almost assaultive, introduction, full of huge chords, surprising dissonances, and dotted rhythms. Mozart then introduces a fugue of great power, which develops for some minutes before he offers relief with a lovely central interlude in A-flat major marked Andante. The opening fugue returns (it is now treated as a double fugue), and the Fantasy powers its way to a massive close.

How could music like this—so huge, so strong, so expressive—have been composed for a shrill and tooting little mechanical clock-organ? Mozart’s biographer Alfred Einstein believes the Fantasy so complex and powerful that it should be played by a full symphony orchestra, and this music has also been arranged for a variety of instruments, including wind quintet, accordion quartet, piano solo, piano four-hands, two flutes, and others. It is heard at this concert in an arrangement for two pianos by Ferruccio Busoni.

Almost nine months to the day after composing the Fantasy, Mozart was dead at age 35. This music remains largely unknown to general audiences, but it is one more in that sequence of masterpieces from Mozart’s final year. It did not remain a secret to one young composer who arrived in Vienna only months after Mozart’s death. He encountered the Fantasy in Mozart’s own manuscript and—astonished by this music—made a pencil copy for himself. His name was Beethoven.

Join us for the next Open Rehearsal: Tuesday, August 2 · 2:30-3:30 PM · Imogen Cooper, Liza Ferschtman, and Efe Baltacigil rehearse Beethoven’s Piano Trio in D Major, Op. 70, No. 1 “

Financial support is provided by the City of San Diego

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