Born in Vienna in 1930, Friedrich Gulda started piano lessons at the age of seven. At 12 he enrolled in the Vienna Music Academy, and four years later he received first prize in the Geneva International Music Festival. In 1949 Gulda toured Europe and South America, earning international acclaim for his treatments of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, and the following year he made a successful debut at Carnegie Hall. He also began recording for Decca around this time. Gulda was often grouped with Jörg Demus and Paul Badura-Skoda; all were young Viennese pianists oriented toward the heart of the city's musical tradition.
Rebecca Rust, cello, and Friedrich Edelmann, bassoon, have played together in duos, trios and larger chamber music groups for over 30 years. From their home base in Germany, this huband-and-wife team performs in America, Europe and Japan including radio and TV productions. Praised by Carlo Maria Giulini for her exceptional musicality, the American cellist Rebecca Rust, a native of California, received her first piano lessons with her mother at the age of five and began cello lessons with Margaret Rowell. Rowell said: Rebecca Rust is one of the most talented cellists that I have had the pleasure of teaching. Blessed with a beautiful ear and facility, she has used these gifts as tools to dig deep into the music itself, thereby giving her listeners a profound musical experience. Rebecca Rust is a brilliant cellist. Friedrich Edelmann grew up in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He studied with Alfred Rinderspacher, Klaus Thunemann, and Milan Turkovic. In 1977 he became the Principal Bassoonist of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. They are joined on this recording by pianist Scott Faigen.
Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787) was born in Köthen, a small German city, where his father, played viola da gamba and cello in the court orchestra. In 1723 Abel senior became director of the orchestra, when the previous director, Johann Sebastian Bach, moved to Leipzig. That the young Abel later attended the Leipzig Thomasschule and was taught there by Bach is not finally confirmed. What is known, however, is that he joined Johann Adolph Hasse's court orchestra in Dresden on Bach's recommendation in 1748, where he remained for nine years. On Bach's recommendation in 1748 he was able to join Johann Adolph Hasse's court orchestra at Dresden, where he remained for fifteen years.
The brief heyday of the Anhaltinische Hof in Zerbst (Saxony-Anhalt) coincided with the work of its court Kapellmeister Johann Friedrich Fasch. The benevolent and prudent Prince Johann August von Anhalt-Zerbst (1677-1742) expanded his court orchestra and engaged outstanding musicians for this purpose.
In 1764 a couple of German musicians lodged together in London. They shared a sort of common background, for one was the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach, newly arrived in town to write opera, and the other, Carl Friedrich Abel, had been Bach’s student back in Leipzig more than a decade earlier. He was in town to make his living as a composer of instrumental works and as a performer on that now-anachronistic instrument the viola da gamba. The two apparently hit it off quite well, for they soon conspired to develop the famed Bach-Abel concert series that became a fixture in the city for more than a decade and a half. Given that they also contrived to perform as well, it is not surprising that both men created a wide variety of works for their instruments, Bach on the keyboard and Abel on his gamba.
Johann Friedrich Fasch was a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach, and that has seriously hampered the interest in his music. It was the German musicologist Hugo Riemann, who at the beginning of the 20th century made an attempt to restore his reputation.