Praeludium and Allegro (1910)

in the style of Gaetano Pugnani

Allegro – Andante – Allegro –

Allegro molto moderato

Until he was found out – as the composer rather than the arranger of violin music he had presented as the work of such 17th and 18th-century composers as Couperin, Francoeur and Porpora    – Kreisler attributed the Praeludium and Allegro to Gaetano Pugnani. Even now, when we know so much more about baroque and early classical music, it remains much the most familiar piece associated with the name of Pugnani. It is said that Kreisler knew little of the composers he picked on – from the pages of Grove apparently – but he must have been aware of Pugnani’s proverbial “arco magno,” the heavy bowing evoked by the striding crotchets of the outer (Allegro) sections of the Praeludium of the present work. It makes way for the more expressive bowing of the Andante middle section and is then vividly offset by the often fantasia-like, sometimes dramatically double-stopped bravura of the main Allegro. A tierce de picardie is added as a final “period’ touch.