Franz Berwald (1796-1868)
Septet in B flat major Serenade
Piano Quartet in E flat major

The Swedish composer Franz Berwald was the most distinguished of a musical dynasty of German origin. Johann Daniel Berwald, who died in 1691, served as a town musician in Neumarkt. His son Johann Gottfried, born in 1679, was Kunstpfeifer in Königsberg, and his own son, the flautist Johann Friedrich Berwaid, after appointments in Copenhagen and Hohenaspe, joined in 1770 the Mecklenburg-Schwerin orchestra in Ludwigslust and fathered a number of musicians among the twenty-five children from his four marriages. One of his sons, Johann Gottfried, born in Copenhagen in 1737, studied with Franz Benda and served as a violinist at Ludwigslust before moving to St Petersburg, where he settled until his death in 1814. Another son, Christian Friedrich Georg, born at Hohenaspe in 1740, also studied in Berlin with Benda and in 1772 settled in Stockholm as a violinist and mem