FROBERGER: Toccatas and Partitas

Vartolo, Sergio

8.557472-73

Froberger belongs to a generation of musicians from the Germanic area (the most prominent being Heinrich Schütz) who were trained in Italy through the generosity of enlightened princes deeply imbued with Latin and Italian culture. Unlike other illustrious musicians with whom he shared ties of friendship (Weckmann, Schütz), however, he also drew inspiration from the French style, his contribution to which marks him as one of the founders of that particular harpsichord style. • Through his musical training and his close ties with Frescobaldi, Froberger became a vital link between the Italian master and the music north of the Alps. In particular he helped to introduce Germany to Frescobaldi’s contrapuntal style (that of the Fantasie, Ricercari, Capricci and Canzoni), genres that were to coexist with a parallel Italian style, that of the Venetian toccata and intonazione. In fact Froberger’s first compositional phase owes a great deal to the imitation of the Frescobaldian genres, confirmed by his similar use of tablature for the toccatas in contrast with that of score for the contrapuntal forms. • For the present recording I have drawn on the main Viennese sources of Froberger’s work, though I have excluded the contrapuntal works in order to give greater prominence to the toccata and the dance forms. • (Sergio Vartolo)

CD x 2

Naxos

7.03.2005

747313247226