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For a musician, the fugue is inextricably linked with Bach, who raised the fugue to dizzying stylistic heights. The Latin fuga means “flight” – in other words, a theme “flees” from one voice to another and is repeated at different pitches. One of the most vital, long-lasting, and eternally modern musical forms of the past and present can be experienced in this chamber concert: starting with Mozart, who savored all the techniques he discovered in Bach, continuing with Beethoven, who replaced what contemporary critics considered the incomprehensible fugue of the last movement of his Quartet op. 130 with a more accessible finale, and finally ending with Widmann, in whose work soprano Serafina Starke runs away from the fugue – or is it the other way around?
The chamber music of the Viennese Classical period contains both occasional works for private music-making as well as sophisticated concert music – and this duality will be evident in this charming concert for winds and strings. Mozart’s Flute Quartet in D major, composed during his stay in Mannheim in 1777, and Haydn’s Divertimento in C major, composed during his second trip to London in 1794, were both commissioned by amateur flutists. On the other hand, Mozart conceived the oboe part of his Quartet in F major, composed in 1781, for one of the best oboists of that time, Friedrich Ramm; it was probably intended as a token of appreciation for Ramm’s excellent performance at the premiere of Idomeneo in Munich. Beethoven had something quite different in mind with the three String Trios op. 9: with their heightened expressivity and expansive dimensions, they embody a type of chamber music that is no longer lightweight but rather has become a serious discourse for connoisseurs. The third Trio in C minor constitutes the pinnacle of the set.
