Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K.546

Adagio - Allegro

One of the most significant events in Mozart’s career - one which changed his whole style, once he had absorbed its implications - was his encounter with J.S.Bach. He knew Bach’s sons and was particularly indebted to Johann Christian, but the music of Bach the father was little known to him, or of little importance to him, until about 1782. He came to realise the greatness of Bach through his contact with Baron von Swieten, who had been the Imperial Ambassador to the court of Prussia in the 1770s and whose attention had been drawn to J.S.Bach by none other than Frederick the Great. From then on van Swieten became a baroque enthusiast and, when he returned to Vienna, used to present concerts of Bach and Handel at his home on Sunday mornings.

It was for these concerts that Mozart made a number of arrangements of Bach keyboard fugues. He was deeply affected by them and one of the early results was the Fugue in C minor, K.426, for two pianos - a fully developed four-part fugue on a Bach-like theme. Later, in 1788, he arranged it for string orchestra and supplied it with a Prelude which, though of an unaccustomed grandiloquence in Mozart’s music, is no more than the fugue deserves.

Adagio - Allegro

One of the most significant events in Mozart’s development - one which changed his whole style, once he had absorbed its implications - was his encounter with J.S.Bach. He knew Bach’s sons and was particularly indebted to Johann Christian, but the music of Bach the father was little known to him, or of little importance to him, until about 1782. He came to realize the greatness of Bach through his contact with Baron von Swieten, who had been the Imperial Ambassador to the court of Prussia in the 1770s and whose attention had been drawn to J.S.Bach by none other than Frederick the Great. From then on van Swieten became a baroque enthusiast and, when he returned to Vienna, used to present concerts of Bach and Handel at his home at Sunday lunchtime.

It was for these concerts that Mozart made a number of arrangements of Bach keyboard fugues - an exercise which had a profound effect on his own music. An early result was the two-piano Fugue in C minor, K.426, on a theme not unlike fugal subjects used by both Bach and Handel (and similar also to one Mozart himself was to adopt in the Kyrie of his Requiem). Later, in 1788, he arranged it for string orchestra and supplied it with a prelude which, in its alternating diatonic grandiloquence and chromatic restlessness, is an apt introduction to a fugue based on a theme which combines a blunt imperative with an appealing question. The young Beethoven was so impressed by the Fugue, which is a masterful study in imitative counterpoint and a fully developed model of its kind, that he wrote out the two-piano version in a score in four distinct parts.