Benda: Concerti

A fine introduction to the music of the highly gifted Benda brothers - their compositions are served well by Il Gardellino. Frederick II of Prussia (1712 - 1786) had a great interest in intellectual and artistic matters and a special liking for music. He was taught to play the flute by Johann Joachim Quantz, to the great dissatisfaction of his father. When Frederick William I took drastic action Frederick only became more resolute to follow his heart. At his court in Ruppin he started to assemble musicians, and appointed Carl Heinrich Graun as general court musician in 1735. The next year he moved to Rheinsberg, accompanied by musicians of fame, like Graun and his brother Johann Gottlieb, the brothers Franz and Georg Anton Benda, Christoph Schaffrath and Johann Gottlieb Janitsch. In 1740 he succeeded his father as King of Prussia, and immediately started to extend his court chapel. Apart from the musicians mentioned above he attracted Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Christoph Nichelma