Although King Frederick only composed sporadically in his later years—almost his entire life’s work dates from before the Seven Years’ War in 1756, which brought Prussia and its ruler to the verge of ruin—the flute, and flute-playing, remained his loyal companions to his dying days. As late as 1770 the famous soprano Elisabeth Mara acclaimed his ‘strong, full tone and great proficiency’. And the well-travelled English music historian Charles Burney explicitly praised Frederick’s skills: ‘His playing was superior, in many respects, to anything I had heard from amateur or indeed professional flute-players.’ His own compositions, which he performed in small private concerts, were highly valued for their quality, although Frederick would have been well aware that in Quantz, Graun, C.P.E. Bach and other musicians in his court orchestra he had assembled a group of outstanding performers who would breathe new life into the musical life of Berlin and Potsdam in the middle of the 18th century and would have far-reaching effects as the fine arts moved towards a new cultural aesthetic of sensibility, ultimately ushering in the era of Sturm und Drang.

– Detlef Giese
English translation: Saul Lipetz