...feeling, taste and science...The viola da gamba music of Carl Friedrich Abel by Richard Bootby

Carl Friedrich Abel

Richard Bootby

...feeling, taste and science...The viola da gamba music of Carl Friedrich Abel

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Signum Classics
UPC: 0635212102220
Catnr: SIGCD 1022
Release date: 13 November 2026
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Label
Signum Classics

UPC
0635212102220

Catalogue number
SIGCD 1022

Release date
13 November 2026

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

"...Feeling, Taste & Science...": The Viola da Gamba Music of Carl Friedrich Abel presents Richard Boothby and Fretwork exploring the work of Carl Friedrich Abel, the German-born composer and viola da gamba player who became a central figure in London's musical life from 1759 until his death in 1787. The programme draws on solo works from the Drexel Manuscript, three sonatas with harpsichord, and a fugue believed to have been composed for Abel's close friend Thomas Gainsborough. Countertenor Iestyn Davies joins for Abel's only known aria. Two of the three sonatas included are recorded here for the first time, having been discovered in a castle in Poland.

Artist(s)

Richard Bootby

Richard Boothby has been playing the viol ever since David Fallows handed him a tenor viol in 1977. He was trying to help him with a thesis entitled ‘Wagner’s Ring and its tonality’ at Manchester University. After further study with Nikolaus Harnoncourt in Salzburg, he helped to found The Purcell Quartet in 1984 and Fretwork in 1985. With Fretwork, he has endeavoured to enrich the viol-consort repertory with new music from today’s finest composers, from Elvis Costello to George Benjamin, from Alexander Goehr to Nico Muhly. With the Purcell Quartet, he recorded nearly 50 albums for Hyperion and Chandos; and with Fretwork over 70 albums for Virgin Classics, Harmonia Mundi USA and most recently, Signum Classics.

Richard Boothby has been playing the viol ever since David Fallows handed him a tenor viol in 1977. He was trying to help him with a thesis entitled ‘Wagner’s Ring and its tonality’ at Manchester University. After further study with Nikolaus Harnoncourt in Salzburg, he helped to found The Purcell Quartet in 1984 and Fretwork in 1985.
With Fretwork, he has endeavoured to enrich the viol-consort repertory with new music from today’s finest composers, from Elvis Costello to George Benjamin, from Alexander Goehr to Nico Muhly.
With the Purcell Quartet, he recorded nearly 50 albums for Hyperion and Chandos; and with Fretwork over 70 albums for Virgin Classics, Harmonia Mundi USA and most recently, Signum Classics.

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Fretwork

Few other ensembles can match the range of Fretwork’s repertory, spanning as it does the first printed music of 1501 in Venice, to music commissioned by the group this year. This extraordinary breadth of music has taken them all over the world since their debut in 1986; but they now prefer to travel by train and car. Their recordings of the classic English viol repertory – Purcell, Gibbons, Lawes, Dowland & Byrd – have become the benchmark by which others are judged, while their newly-commissioned music has included works by Sir George Benjamin, Nico Muhly, Elvis Costello, John Woolrich and many others. The consistently high standards they have achieved have brought music old and new to audiences hitherto unfamiliar with...

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Composer(s)

Carl Friedrich Abel

Abel was born in the Bach city Cöthen as the son of a court musician and soon turned into a gamba virtuoso. Later on, he was also admired for his improvisatory gifts. He began his career as member of the court orchestra in Dresden, and travelled and finally settled in London in 1758, where he was active as an impresario and organizer of subscription concerts, together with Johann Christian Bach. To a certain extent, Abel succeeded Handel, who died after the first concert in 1759. Abel also became friends with the young Mozart during his visit to London in 1764. Abel and Bach jr. collaborated from 1760 till 1781, with their own concert hall on Hanover Square as a result. In...

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