Fantasia No. 2 in C minor K. 396 (Mozart)
Movements
Notes
Both K. 396 and K. 394 Fantasias were written in 1782, even if K.396 was first published in 1802 when Maximilian Stadler completed the 28 bars fragment manuscript that Mozart hadn’t finished. The title “Fantasia” comes from him and seems appropriate. Both works, from the same period, were written at a time when Mozart was having a Baroque moment, discovering the music of J.S. Bach and Handel. In a letter to his father he mentioned that he was collecting Bach’s fugues. He even transcribed some of them for string quartet. Mozart took to the style immediately and earned a reputation for his virtuosic keyboard improvisations. These two pieces, written in a free form, as “fantasias” offer, or so we imagine, a sense of Mozart the improviser, and the Fantasia and Fugue K.394 was one of the results from his interest in counterpoint.
