Have any forum members studied or performed these works? I find K. 608 extremely difficult and K. 594 far more manageable in terms of length and technical demand. But still, I would like to know how experienced players tackle the parallel 6ths in the LH accompaniment in the Allegro section of K. 594. Any suggestions for someone with small hands?

I am using the Baerenreiter edition and have not compared it to other editions. Should I expect to see many differences between different editions as these pieces were not truly composed for the organ?

These are magnificent pieces indeed, written at the very height of Mozart's powers with all the spendour of his finest styles and in the softer sections exhibiting unmatched pathos. The opening and closing movements of K594 are amongst the best music Mozart ever wrote. The Andante and three variations from K608 are similarly extremely fine. The central movements of K594 pay homage to Handel. The fugue and double fugue of K608 pay homage to Bach.

The original scores are lost. They would have been written on three treble staves and not have taken account of the limitations of hands and feet. Both pieces are transcribed for organ from piano duet versions made by others shortly after the date of composition.

There is much talk about which versions are the most scholarly. This misses the point. We know (from Mozart's letter to his wife) that he would have preferred to write for a proper organ, so an arrangement is the only way of realising the music. A 'scholarly' version would involve only pipes no longer than four feet and a very high speed indeed. (We know how fast the K594 was played by the machine.)

Both pieces are rich in Masonic imagery. The opening rhythm of the allegro in K 594, for example, is the 'Third Degree Knocks', ironed out in arrangements that use a quaver instead of two semi-quavers. If you will let me have your email address I will send you a copy of my article, published in Laudate, The Guild of Church Musicians' magazine, entitled 'A Miscellany on Mozart, Mechanical Music and Freemasonry'. This gives the background to the music and the museum for which they were written.

Henry Ley's arrangement of K594 is very good and Walter Emery's version of K608 has long been popular and rightly so. Both are not too difficult and work well on large and small instruments alike. I play both pieces from Dupre arrangements,with the slight alteration in the K 594 in that I observe the semi-quaver rhythm (see my comments above) rather than the quavers that appear in almost every version except the piano duet. I use the Dupre versions because they work well on our house organ. (It was one of the criteria for design of that instrument that both these Mozart Fantasias could be played on it without undue compromise.)

Dupre gives excellent fingering for the notorious parallel sixths. However, he puts some of the runs in K594 in the pedals - you need highly educated feet! The danger is that by using simplified scores the grandeur can be lost. Although it is not a popular thing to say, I suggest you play the music rather than the notes, as it is virtually impossible to re-create the originals. (Even if it were possible, it is musically undesirable.)

Both pieces, in my view, call for an expansive interpretation using the full resources of the modern organ. W T Best's fullsome score sounded glorious at the Albert Hall when Simon Preston played it at a prom - about 1978, I think.

I wish you luck in your pursuit of the music.

Barry Williams

Thanks for this Barry, very useful information. I knew they came from piano duets, as that is the version I came across first. When I was a student, a friend and I were invited to give a recital for two organs at the (now sadly defunct) Paisley organ festival, where they had an exhibit of two small chamber organs. We played both, from the piano duet version, along with some Soler and numbers from that English Organ Series that had a duet volume (I think there might have been some Tomkins in there). We didn't play the Wesley!

I used to play them both - I actually did K608 for my audition at the RAM - but haven't touched them seriously for years. I doubt if my RSI would allow me to get them back into repertory now.

Reading them through mentally at a desk, the Bärenreiter arrangements look very nicely done. Albrecht manages to produce clean, classical textures which, when played on a large organ with good chorus work, sound imposing without overlaying the pieces with inappropriate late Romanticism, which (for whatever reason) is the net result of Glaus's arrangement of K608 published by Peters. But...

However attractive they look on paper, Albrecht's arrangements are not the most practical at the keyboard. A case in point is the beginning of the allegro of K594, where, on the anacruses, he preserves the semiquavers in all parts. Ley confines the semiquavers to the right hand here and does not bother with the repetition in the left hand and pedal (making do with a quaver). This is much more sensible because, even if you can do it, the chances are that your organ won't! Generally speaking his solutions to these two Fantasias are really quite similar to the Novello arrangements by Ley and Emery, while at the same time contriving to be more difficult than either. For example, for the consecutive sixths you asked about, Ley simply omits the tied semibreves at the top of the texture (the note is in the pedal anyway), which then leaves him room to divide the sixths between the two hands. This is a lot easier - though admittedly the right hand is still a bit of a handful.

If I were you, I'd consult the Novello scores and prune/rearrange Albrecht to suit.

Incidentally, in K608 I find Emery's ascending pedal arpeggios at the end of the andante so much more convincing than Glaus's reading, so I was surprised to see Albrecht following Glaus. I have no idea what Mozart wrote.