I am sure many are aware of my passion for the Fantasias. How, then, not to try my hand at performing Mozart’s only two fantasias? First, we have to approach them very differently. In these two works Mozart can use something in the piano that we harpists do not have access to as easily: silence. In the piano, all he has to do is raise the pedal, remove his hands from the keys, and the performer has a sublime muffling of all sounds. In the harp, by contrast, the art of damping is a long and difficult study even for the most experienced, and to achieve that silence I mentioned earlier we would have to damp so many times, so constantly, that the nature of the piece would inevitably be destroyed. In my two transcriptions I have indicated very precisely, according to my experience, where and what to dampen; as always my aim is to preserve the soul of the original, without becoming imprisoned by it. For if you seek (apparent) pianistic perfection at all costs, you will be trapped.

In the Fantasia in D, there is only one chromatic scale to tweak and there are many solutions (you will find them at the bottom). In the longer and technically more difficult C Fantasy, I have found some enharmonic solutions in the faster passages that will help achieve the equivalent harpistic effect. Both of these fantasies sound wonderful on the harp.