fugato

Not one of the composer's greatest works, this (tired fugatos, the first movement's long-prepared second subject a direct quote from the First Piano Concerto which caused the composer so much difficulty, and at times it even sounds like his despised Brahms), but this account fizzed with electricity and sang open-throatedly.

In place of traditional, elaborate fugues, Weber substituted terse fugatos or short points of imitation, three of which he borrowed anti reworked from his opus primum, the Sechs Fughetten of 1798 (Salzburg: in Kommission der Mayrischen Buchhandlung).

By the beginning of the development one can warm to the Romantic atmosphere--as coloured in by these bygone timbres--in which Brahms builds new constructs and excursions from his material, including one of his finest and best-integrated symphonic fugatos.