KV 594

Originally, Mozart’s Adagio and Allegro KV 594 was to be played on the organ automaton of an opulent diorama presented by Count Deym in Vienna in 1791, in memory of field marshal Laudon; technical problems, however, seem to have prevented this piece from ever being played. Thanks to the new CD released by the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the music of this composition is now brought to life as a virtual reconstruction. Without the expertise gained during the reconstruction of KV 608, the composition that was to follow, it would have been impossible to reconstruct the sound of Mozart’s Adagio and Allegro KV 594: practically no contemporary accounts relating to its performance practice are extant. As a result, merely four possible variants of the sound reconstruction of KV 594 are presented here; they will, however, come very close to the original intentions of both Deym and Mozart himself. What is so special about this composition is the fact that this music has presumably never experienced a historical performance; even so, its “authentic sound” – derived from appropriately selected registers of a real organ instrument – can now be listened to for the first time on this recording. It is accompanied by a detailed booklet highlighting aspects of the historical situation in 1791 and the transformation into a virtual musical reconstruction.