Luogo e data di registrazione		Hervormde Kerk, Bennebroek (Holland) - Febbraio 1970
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		Wolf Erichson
	Prima Edizione LP		Telefunken "Das Alte Werk" | SAWT 9569-B | 1 LP - durata 50' 36" | (p) 1970 | ANA
	Edizione CD		Teldec Classics "Gustav Leonhardt Edition" | LC 6019 | 3984-21762-2 | 1 CD - durata 50' 36"  | (c) 1998 | ADD
	Cover		"Das Konzert" von Veermer van Delft (1632-1675)
	Note		-

Froberger's influences can be recognized not only in the works of Händel and Johann sebastian Bach, but also of Bach's sons. That means quite a lot for a period that lived far more in its present than in its past. Johann Jakob Froberger was a member of a Saxon family from Halle although he was actually born (1616) in Stuttgart where his father was a court conductor. Johann Jakob's special gift was one of synthesizing; thus he succeeded in developing the many separate styles of the time into one concentrated yet quite "European" manner of composition that, in turn, had an inspiring effect both formally and stylistically. It may be hardly true, as was assumed until just recently, that he was the father of the piano suite, yet as a composer for the piano he did write direction-giving works for the organ and the harpsichord, works that in their variety and vital power of expression can affect us directly even today. In other words, they are far from being of interest to only the historian desirous of proving how Froberger blended together influences drawn chiefly from Italian and French music, but also taken later from English and Dutch music hand, last but not least, from the North German school - however, exciting such evidence may be for the musicologist since, after all, the role ob being the most important intermediary at the middle of the seventeenth century must be ascribed to Froberger. This fact is based on Froberger's life and development. While he was still in Stuttgart (where music at the court followed Italian, English and French models), he encountered a cosmopolitan-oriented mentality. He continued his studies in Vienna, was active as organist, and finally received a grant to spend a period in Rome where his studies with Frescobaldi were to provide him with the most lasting influences for his subsequent composition. When Froberger returned to Vienna in 1641, he was engaged by the court as a fulltime organist. Four years later, however, Froberger took to the road again - he worked in several European cities, took part in a famous contest in Dresden, then 1653, returned from Brussels and london, via Paris, to spend four more years in Vienna where chamber music for entertainment of the court was added to his duties as organist. Upon the death of King Ferdinand IV (1654) Froberger wrote his Suite No. 12 as a lamento of firm character. He retained the French suite style with respect to the sequence of the movements which thus in this case read Gigue - Courante - Sarabande. In his other suites - and these are counted among his chief works - he sometimes preceded the gigue with an allemande, but always concluded with the sarabande. His predilection for variations was also given broad ground in his French-styled suites in which he incorporated partially Italian and partially German elements of his won. In the toccatas we also sense new compositional means of transition that clearly distinguish Froberger's form combinations from those of Frescobaldi, as found for example in the early type of toccata alla leviatione. Froberger developed the stricter counterpoint of the two - even to the point of almost completely regular fugues. Even today is still is fascinating to notice how the conflict between Frescobaldi's largesse and North German parsimony in questions of form assumed its own independent mold in Froberger's music and explains to some extent Froberger's very great fame and reputation in his day. When he was thirty-five years old, he was a well-known figure, both as a composer and as a brilliant virtuoso, in all of the musical centers in Europe. When Froberger was ill and had learned of his impending early death, he sought refuge with Duchess Sibylla of Württemberg. His conversion to catholicism while a young man in Rome had made him highly devout. It seems that the duchess was the only person close to Froberger at the time since he had never married and no longer had any living relatives. The duchess had to promise Froberger that she would "give no one nothing" i his works "since many did not know how to handle them, but would simply ruin them." When Froberger died if apoplexy at Héricourt near Mentbéliard in 1667, there remained few of his scores for posterity, hardly any vocal music, no works for instrumental ensembles. The compositions that we known cannot even be dated precisely. The first group of works, capriccios and ricercari, probably belongs to the period after 1658; th first fantasias and canzonas may have been written before 1649. Still, everything that has come down to us gives evidence of an ingenious sense of combination, as well as of an elementary abolity to create music with expressive harmony, firmly set rhythms, with almost folk-like melodies and - in the constructive sense - charming augmentation or diminution of themes in ricercari and fantasias. It is not without reason that Froberger's influence upon even the works of Bach and Händel cannot be denied, for, at the middle of the seventeenth century, he was an acknowledged and important musician and composer. Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski