Fantasia, Wq 67

Pairs of chords sound above a steady bass, separated by rests. After two measured bars a run rises through the keyboard and the bar lines stop. Sudden piano and forte markings alternate within a single phrase.

Benson came to Fritz Neumeyer’s clavichord lessons as an accomplished pianist. At first he would not let her play pieces, and for months she worked only on producing a tone. Recalling those lessons in 1999, she said, “I had to become a beginner again”.

“A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved.” Bach wrote this in his 1753 keyboard treatise. He named improvisations and fantasias as the places where the player could most directly command an audience’s feelings.

After dinner in Hamburg in 1772, Bach played the clavichord for Charles Burney until nearly eleven. Burney described his fixed eyes, his fallen lower lip and the sweat that gathered as he played.

Preparing this fantasia for a 1961 radio appearance on KQED, Benson considered shortening it but found that each section led into the next. In her 1999 interview with Richard Troeger, she recalled tracing the connection through the bass line and letting the piece change with every performance.

Benson’s first recording sessions, in 1962, took place in three locations. Cleaners interrupted one and a radio station intruded on another, and the sessions were finally completed in a house in Marin County. Between takes she went outside to look at the stars or pet the dog.

The last Largo brings back bar lines and a twelve-eight metre. The left hand repeats low F♯s while the right hand plays its final figures. The last phrase is marked pianissimo, and rests follow the closing chord.