| Description: | Karol August Freyer (1801-1883) was a Polish composer, organist and teacher of German origin.
He began music and organ lessons at the age of six with the cantor in Annaberg, KB Geißler, and music theory and composition with Schneider and Pohlenz in Leipzig. Recommended by them to Józef Elsner, he went to Warsaw in 1827 to complete his musical studies with the latter. He remained in Poland for the rest of his life, working as a music educator. In his time, he was considered the best organist in the capital.
Until 1830, he taught the then eight-year-old Stanislaw Moniuszko and was also a close friend of Fryderyk Chopin. From the 1830's he devoted himself exclusively to playing the organ. In 1834 he went on an artistic tour of Germany, visiting, among others, Wroclaw, Berlin, Hamburg and cities in his native Saxony, and gaining high recognition from the audience, critics and major musicians, such as Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Ludwig Spohr .
Returning to Warsaw in 1837, Freyer took over the position of organist at the capital's Evangelical Parish of the Holy Trinity where he had a professional parish choir. It was also here that he founded a music school, where he educated poorer students free of charge.
Freyer was a valued composer, whose works are still performed today. He composed preludes, fantasias, concert variations, masses, and chorales.
"Concert Variations, Op. 2" was composed in 1846. It is based upon the hymn, "God save the Tsar," composed in 1833 by Alexei Fyodorovich Lvov (1798-1870).
It is a fine and solid grandiose set of variations of various types, very much in the German manner, and ending with the usual pedal variation.
The score is attached below, as well as images of August Fryer (portrait and grave), Alexi Lvov, and some of Holy Trinity Church in Warsaw, where Freyer served as organist.
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