# K394 Mozart Prelude and Fugue



## PlaySalieri

Some of you may know I was the recipient of Brilliant Classics Mozart edition recently.

I was initially sceptical but I can see now that for someone like me - who thought he knew Mozart's music very very well - if not completely - it is a very useful set.

How it has come to pass that I never before heard K394 - I have no idea - but there it is.

I have since read up on it and understand that Mozart wrote it aftera request from his then fiance - Constanze, who had heard him going through some Bacj fugues and insisted that he write one.

The result - in my opinion - is really quite special. In fact - K394 kicks ***!

So which interpretations are really good? The one that came with the set is on fortepiano, and to my taste - a bit heavy handed. I hate Glen Gould's introduction - far too slow - drags it through mud. I like Annie Fischer's playing






any other recommendations or comments on this piece?


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## kv466

The only comment is that Ole' Annie's version utterly sucks! "far too slow" Well, I'd rather hear something played exquisitely while being dragged through the mud than sit there and listen to someone who has no idea how to approach the piece and drag the entire thing through, well...cow 'mud'. I've known this piece for over twenty years and have heard it by many (as painful as it was) and I guess some of us just have discerning ears, some don't.






What's next?! You prefer Karajan's Mozart to Marriner's?


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## Ukko

Perhaps it would assist the uninitiated to _understand the plan_. Those slow intros are an invitation to 'come in... all the way in' to the music. If one accepts the invitation, the piece is apt to work... just not the way Annie wants it to.


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## joen_cph

_Samuil Feinberg_ recorded this piece, albeit in poor sound. As always, a personal reading by him, and a big contrast to Fischer and Gould: 




I like both Fischer´s and Gould´s too though.


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## PlaySalieri

kv466 said:


> The only comment is that Ole' Annie's version utterly sucks! "far too slow" Well, I'd rather hear something played exquisitely while being dragged through the mud than sit there and listen to someone who has no idea how to approach the piece and drag the entire thing through, well...cow 'mud'. I've known this piece for over twenty years and have heard it by many (as painful as it was) *and I guess some of us just have discerning ears, some don't.*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What's next?! You prefer Karajan's Mozart to Marriner's?


So you are only a discerning listener if you like Gould's version over Annie Fischer's and reach all the conclusions that you have reached after listeing to this piece for 20 years. Right.

Well then sir - may I award you this years TC discerning listener golden ward.

Things just don't change on here


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## Mandryka

I like Ton Koopman's record of this most. Also Schornsheim/Staier is certainly well worth catching.

Generally I'm very interested in Mozart's severe contrapuntal music, escpecially that thing for the musical clock.

Listen to the way Gould pounds out the repeated octaves in the fantasia!


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## PlaySalieri

Mandryka said:


> I like Ton Koopman's record of this most. Also Schornsheim/Staier is certainly well worth catching.
> 
> Generally I'm very interested in Mozart's severe contrapuntal music, escpecially that thing for the musical clock.
> 
> *Listen to the way Gould pounds out the repeated octaves in the fantasia!*


*
*
OK - well I only listened to the opening - which I found unpleasant - but I will listen to the rest and see - I will try the Koopman


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## Ukko

stomanek said:


> [/B]
> OK - well I only listened to the opening - which I found unpleasant - but I will listen to the rest and see - I will try the Koopman


From your comments I am willing to assume that you will listen from outside; you won't like it. You may not like it if you accept Gould's invitation, but if you don't there's no hope.


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## PlaySalieri

Hilltroll72 said:


> From your comments I am willing to assume that you will listen from outside; you won't like it. You may not like it if you accept Gould's invitation, but if you don't there's no hope.


I listened to it properly - yes it is an interesting interpretation.


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## Kieran

I have Richard Egarr on this one, and a whole load of other loose-ends piano stuff, like K511 and K540, played on a period instrument. I like this disc but I'd love to have the whole set on a modern piano. The old toy instrument wrecks my teeth after a while...


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## Luchesi

Gould remembers,
"I was definitely homophonically inclined until the age of about ten and then suddenly I got the message and Bach began to emerge into my world and has never altogether left it. Of course one of the great moments of my life - and it was not with a Bach fugue but it was with a fugue, and its relevance is entire- ly fugal - was when I was exposed to my own performance of the Mozart fu- gue K. 394, the C-major one. ... I was learning it - I was an early teenager, I don't remember exactly how old - and suddenly a vacuum cleaner was struck up beside the piano and I couldn't quite hear myself play. ... I began to feel what I was doing, the whole tactile presence of that fugue as represented by finger positions and as represented as by the kind of sound that you might get if you stood in the bathtub and in a shower and shook your head. ... [A]nd it was the most luminously exciting thing you can imagine, the most glorious sound, it took off, all of the things Mozart didn't quite manage to do I was doing for him and I suddenly realized that that particular screen through which I was viewing this and which I had erected between myself and Mozart and his fugue was exactly what I needed to do and exactly why, as I later un- derstood, a certain mechanical process could indeed come between myself and the work of art that I was involved in. (Quoted in McGreevy 1983, 275- 276.)"


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## KenOC

Gould, Fischer, Feinberg, Koopman, Staier, Egarr...all fools, idiots, untalented hacks! I, only I, have the talent, taste, and (yes) the genius to properly play this. You may well scoff, as mediocre minds often do in the presence of a superior mentality. But you'll scoff no more when you hear my soul-searing performance! Unfortunately, I seem to have no keyboard at hand...


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## Larkenfield

K394 is Mozart sounding as Bach-like as I've ever heard him. A masterful fugue yes, but I'm also reminded of Bach's Chromatic Fantasy, which Mozart was probably quite familiar with, and then Mozart adds a few chromatic flourishes of his own. This man could do anything and even make it sound a little more modern-and that's not a slur against Bach.

Rudolph Serkin also played a very deliberate and slow introduction-challenging not to have it sound dull-and then gets into the heart of it at a quicker pace; so I don't think Annie Fisher should be crucified for what she did with a slow beginning. It adds a sense of portent, like a stately pronouncement, and makes the work sound more important.

This is an unusual work because it does not seem typical of Mozart, and yet he did it. Amazing the surly nastiness right off the bat of some of the early posts in this thread! Imagine what a thrill it would have been hearing Mozart playing Bach! Bach may have been forgotten by the public after his death until Mendelssohn "rediscovered" him, but it doesn't look like he was forgotten by the great composers who continued to be inspired and learn from him, including Frederick Chopin.


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## elgar's ghost

I'd be grateful if anyone can recommend an album where Mozart's fantasies, rondos and the adagio are gathered together - I have the sonatas and variations in a boxed set but I don't know where best to go for the rest. Thanks in advance.


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## Mandryka

elgars ghost said:


> I'd be grateful if anyone can recommend an album where Mozart's fantasies, rondos and the adagio are gathered together - I have the sonatas and variations in a boxed set but I don't know where best to go for the rest. Thanks in advance.























...............


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## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> Gould, Fischer, Feinberg, Koopman, Staier, Egarr...all fools, idiots, untalented hacks! I, only I, have the talent, taste, and (yes) the genius to properly play this. You may well scoff, as mediocre minds often do in the presence of a superior mentality. But you'll scoff no more when you hear my soul-searing performance! Unfortunately, I seem to have no keyboard at hand...


Ken, to continue to layer on the sarcasm,
I've been reading your posts for nine (?) years now and I didn't know… I look forward to your box set!


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## Luchesi

Lark, "K394 is Mozart sounding as Bach-like as I’ve ever heard him."

As it gets into the fast-moving andante it's always reminded me of Schubert. Long winded (long phrases) - - pushing and pushing the sounds of the diatonic harmony to dramatic and yearning levels.


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## Larkenfield

Luchesi said:


> Lark, "K394 is Mozart sounding as Bach-like as I've ever heard him."
> 
> As it gets into the fast-moving andante it's always reminded me of Schubert. Long winded (long phrases) - - pushing and pushing the sounds of the diatonic harmony to dramatic and yearning levels.


Will have to listen for that. Schubert fan here.


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