The Complete Keyboard Works Vol 2

• Volume 2 of the world premiere recording of the absolutely complete keyboard worksby the most famous pre-Bach German keyboard composer Johann Jakob Froberger, the pre-eminent German composer of keyboard music in the mid-17th century. As a pupil of Frescobaldi, court organist at Vienna and frequent traveller and performer in the Low Countries, England, France and Germany, he forged a distinctive personal idiom out of stylistic features of Italian, French and German keyboard music.

• The four volumes of this recording contain 20 Toccatas, 7 Fantasies, 6 Canzonas, 17 Capriccios, 14 Ricercars and 30 Suites (including Froberger's only set of variations on a popular melody, the famous Partita auf die Maÿerin. The performances by Richard Egarr are based on the three autograph manuscripts which are kept in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, on three printed editions of Froberger's music which appeared late in the seventeenth century and on around forty secondary manuscript sources from all over Europe. All of the sources are described in the handsome, 40 page booklet that accompanies each of the sets.

• Two harpsichords were used for this recording: one by Joel Katzman after an original instrument by Ruckers from 1638 and the other by Titus Crijnen especially built for this recording after an original instrument by Giusti from 1681. These instruments are typical of what would be found in Europe at the time. The unique and hardly ever recorded organ in the St.Martin's Church in Cuijk dates from around 1650 and the flexible disposition of this extraordinarily fine instrument enabled Richard Egarr to let Froberger's music travel with him from Rome northwards through England and France to Germany with great ease.


Richard Egarr was born in Lincoln (England) in 1963. His musical training began as chorister at York Minster, and at the age of 13 he was accepted to study piano and organ at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester. At 16 he gained his organ diploma with prizes, and became Organscholar at Manchester Cathedral. In 1982 he was awarded a place to read music, and the Organ-scholarship, at Clare College Cambridge. It was during his time there that he began playing tbe harpsichord, and after taking his Mus.B. degree in 1986, he spent a year studying with David Roblou at the Guildhall School of Music in London. The following year, with the award of a Scholarship from the Dutch Government, he studied in Amsterdam at the Sweelinck Conservatorium with Gustav Leonhardt. In 1988, he took top prize in the International C. P. E. Bach Fortepiano-Clavichord-Harpsichord Competition in Hamburg. Richard Egarr has worked extensively throughout Europe, the U.S.A. and Japan both as a soloist and continuo player with such artists as Marie Leonhardt, Max van Egmond, Emma Kirkby, Catherine Bott, Philip Pickett and The New London Consort. Since 1990 he has been the harpsichordist with London Baroque.