Fantasy and Fugue in C Minor (Bach Elgar)

After the death of his wife in 1920, Elgar’s psychological state and creative activity suffered severely: he practically excluded himself from musical life and almost completely refused to work on new works - however, he sometimes returned to old sketches and was engaged in orchestrating the music of other composers. The direct impetus for working on this work by Bach was a meeting with Richard Strauss , with whom Elgar had long-standing friendly relations: the two composers agreed to share this work so that Elgar orchestrated a fugue, and Strauss - a fantasy. Elgar completed his part of the work on April 25, 1921 and sent the composition to the music publisher Novello . October 27 at Queen's Hall in London, Fugue in C minor of Bach Elgar was first performed, conducted by Eugene Goossens . The following year, another conductor, Herbert Brewer , the director of the Three Choirs Music Festival, turned to Elgar with a request to write something for performance at the festival. Since there was no news from Strauss regarding his work on the orchestration of fantasy, Elgar decided to return to this work himself, completing it in June 1922. Fully Fantasy and Fugue in C Minor in the Elgar Orchestra was first performed at the Festival of Three Choirs in Gloucester on September 7, 1922 ^[1] .

As Elgar noted in a letter to the organist Ivor Atkins (June 5, 1921), he “orchestrated Bach's fugue in a modern way - for a rather large orchestra ... There were many Bach arrangements in an elegant manner, and I wanted to show how magnificent, magnificent and brilliant he was could be achieved if he had at our disposal expressive means ” ^[1]