While the life of Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770) is well documented, the same cannot be said for Leonhard Frischmuth (c.1725–1764), a name unknown to many. Frischmuth is today best known for having created and published keyboard transcriptions of six of Tartini’s violin concertos. Frischmuth hailed from the Thuringian village of Gräfenroda, near Gotha, where he studied organ under Johann Christoph Keller, himself a student at Leipzig’s Tomasschule during the tenure of J.S. Bach. Frischmuth travelled to Amsterdam probably around 1750, where he became a pupil of Conrad Friedrich Hurlebusch, organist of the Oude Kerk. On 26 July 1763, Frischmuth was appointed organist of the Nieuwezijdskapel, the only position he is known to have held, and he died having served in the role for just 15 months.
His Tartini transcriptions were published as his Opus 4 by the Dutch printer Arnoldus Olofsen in a collection of concertos ‘accommodati per il cembalo’ (adapted to the harpsichord) and, as was the custom, playable on other keyboard instruments such as the organ. Holland in the early 18th century was ‘ground zero’ for burgeoning interest in organ transcriptions of Italian instrumental concertos, beginning with the blind organist Jan Jacob de Graaf (1672–1738), who performed his own transcriptions of concertos by various composers at concerts he gave on the organ of the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam.
The decision to record these concertos on a historic Italian instrument, built around 1745–50 by the Dalmatian-born organ builder Pietro Nachini (1694–1769), whom Tartini probably knew personally, can only enhance these pieces, as its sonic characteristics would undoubtedly have been familiar to Tartini: at the Basilica del Santo in Padua, Tartini had four organs at his disposal, some of them reconstructed by Nachini in the period 1743–49.
Other information:
- Recorded May 2024 in Castelferretti, Ancona, Italy
- Booklet in English contains liner notes by the organist, a description of the organ with stoplist, and a profile of the artist
- Italian liner notes available at brilliantclassics.com
- Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) was a virtuoso violinist, composer, theoretician and teacher, a spider in the international cultural web in a time when Italy was the centre of the musical world, his violin school, the “School of Nations”, attracted musicians from all over Europe.
- Tartini wrote 125 concertos for his own instrument, the violin, attractive and melodious works full of bold harmonies and featuring brilliant solo parts that freely converse with individual voices within the orchestra. These violin concertos were so famous and popular at the time that the organist and composer Leonard Frischmuth (1721-1764) made organ transcriptions of six of them. Frischmuth, of German origin, was a student at the Thomasschule in Leipzig from 1726 to 1734, during the tenure of Johann Sebastian Bach (later he was an organist in Amsterdam).
- Recorded at the historic 1750 Pietro Nachini organ at the Church of Sant’Andrea Apostolo in Castelferretti, Ancona, Italy.
- Organist Luca Scandali is one of Italy’s foremost scholars and keyboard players. For Brilliant Classics he recorded the complete organ works by C.P.E. Bach (nominated for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, BC 94812), Galuppi, Pasquini (BC 9434) and Pellegrini & Padovano (BC 95259).
