Luogo e data di registrazione		Doopsgezinde Kerk, Haarlem (The Netherlands) - 26/29 March 1995
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Recording supervisor		Wolf Erichson
	Recording Engineer / Editing		Markus Heiland (Tritonus)
	Prima Edizione LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		Sony / Vivarte - SK 48 045 - (1 CD) - durata 77' 00" - (p) 1992 - DDD
	Cover Art		Frederik the Great's Flute Concert (1850-52) bz Adolph von Menzel - Nationalgalerie, Berlin
	Note		-

Flute Sonatas of the Berlin School The 1740 coronation of Frederick the Great of Prussia marked the beginning of an important flourishing of musical life in Berlin. Although the foundation for a court orchestra had been laid at the end of the seventeenth century under Frederick I and Queen Sophie Charlotte, Frederick Wilhelm I had undertaken a systematic dismantling of this project. His dual purpose in this was to wean his son (crown prince Frederick II) of his penchant for culture and to make of him a man of war. The result was a compromise: Frederick II did indeed become an outstanding military commander but also remained throughout his life a passionate lover of music, philosophy, and literature. Long before his accession to the throne in 1740 Frederick II had begun, though unofficially, to take into his service some of the musicians who would remain with him for the rest of his life: Johann Joachim Quantz, his flute instructor (from 1728) and Carl Heinrich Graun, with whom he studied composition; as of 1738 Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was also in the prince`s employ. Sometime before 1750 the Benda brothers joined the court orchestra as violinists. Carl Friedrich Fasch, Johann Gottlieb Janitsch, Johann Philipp Kirnberger, Johann Friedrich Agricola, and Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg also belonged to the royal music circle. In addition, there was an important group of musicians at the court of princess Amalia, Frederick's sister, where, among others, Kirnberger was active for many years. Berlin did not evolve merely as a center for musical performance. A number of composers developed as important theoreticians as well: Quantz, Emanuel Bach, Kirnberger, Agricola, and Marpurg wrote significant works on their several instruments, on composition, and on performance practice. These texts, together with much surviving anecdotal material, give us an idea of how music was played at that time. A number of the ideas of Emanuel Bach have been implemented in this recording. In the repeated sections, for example, alterations - sometimes quite extensive ones - have been introduced because Bach explains in his treatise that this was customary at the time: “The example in F major is an illustration of the current practice, in allegro movements with two repeated sections, of making alterations [i. e., of ornamenting] the second time through.” Bach states further: “Here are my thoughts on this matter: one should not change everything, because this would result in a new piece.” In the sonatas of Müthel and Frederick II no cello has been used. The bass line is quite unadorned and functional so that it seems superfluous to add the stringed instrument to double the keyboard bass line, as had been the practice in the trio-sonata texture; this texture characterized the Baroque era but by Frederick's reign was on the wane. Besides, Emanuel Bach remarks in his autobiography: “Nevertheless, certain circumstances brought it about that I did not formally enter the service of his Prussian Majesty until his accession to the throne in 1740. It was at that time in Charlottenburg that I had the honor of accompanying on cembalo alone the first flute solo that he played as king.” Even the instrument played on this recording - a copy of a flute made by Quantz - comes from Berlin. It is known that from 1739 Quantz made flutes not only for himself but also for the king. This flute is a typically German one with its wide bore and large, masculine sonority. The sonatas assembled here range from the late-Baroque style galant of Quantz, the Graun brothers, Kirnberger and Frederick the Great to the more Sturm-und-Drang approach of Benda and Müthel. One notices in all these works an evolution towards a more personal range of feeling with capricious, expressive ornamentation, rapid shifts in mood, and affecting harmonies. Clearly, the influence of Emanuel Bach upon his colleagues in the Berlin circle is not to be underestimated. In his Versuch über die wahre Art, das Clavier zu spielen (Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard instruments), he wrote that the performer must “himself be able to experience the emotions by which he expects to move his listeners”, and “scarcely having quieted one feeling, he excites another, so that he is constantly replacing one of his passions with another.” All the sonatas recorded here are in three sections: a slow opening section, a virtuoso middle section, and a lighter finale in a kind of tempo di menuetto. The sonatas of Benda and Frederick are the exceptions that prove the rule in regard to their finales. Johann Gottfried Müthel never actually worked in Berlin. He was the last of the students of Johann Sebastian Bach and studied in Berlin in 1750 with Emanuel Bach, later settling in Riga. This flute sonata may have been composed in Berlin or sent later as a gift for the king, since the manuscript is located in Berlin. The present work shares with Müthel's other compositions a unique and intensely personal music of high quality. He received great praise from Charles Burney, who wrote that the compositions of Müthel “are so full of novelty, taste, grace, and contrivance, that I should not hesitate to rank them among the greatest productions of the present age.” The fact that the Berlin school produced so much flute music (many hundreds of sonatas and concerti) has, of course, everything to do with Frederick the Great. He seems to have been an excellent flautist who, however, had rhythmic difficulties, a fact which sometimes made life difficult for his accompanists, if we may trust the complaints of Emanuel Bach. In any case Charles Burney gives us a very positive picture of a concert, “in which his majesty executed the solo parts with great precision; his embouchure was clear and even, his finger brilliant, and his taste pure and simple. I was much pleased, and even surprised with the nearness of his execution in the allegros, as well as by his expression and feeling in the adagio; in short, his performance surpassed, in many particulars, anything I had ever heard among Dilettanti, or even professors. [...] The cadences which his majesty made, were good, but very long and studied. [...] M. Quantz bore no other part in the performance of the concertos of tonight than to give the time with the motion of his hand, at the beginning of each movement, except now and then to cry out bravo! to his royal scholar, at the end of the solo parts and closes [...].“ Jan De Winne (Translation: © 1996 David Seward