In the year of my birth, 1976, Hans Werner Henze published one of the most wonderful jewels of composition for guitar: Royal Winter Music, sonata no.1, six works based on characters from Shakespeare. Ariel, the sprite in the tempest who summons a storm at the command of Prospero, forms the basis of my solo program, in which Henzes’ music meets the work of Robert Johnson (who wrote the original theatre music for „The Tempest“) and his contemporary John Dowland. In turn, Benjamin Britten composed Variations for his Nocturnal, which, after a great Passacaglia, flow into a theme by Dowland.. This work stands in contrast to a transcription of Ignaz Franz Biber’s famous passacaglia, a religious meditation on the 4 tones of a fourth.

All in all: magical tones, as though from Prospero’s Island and music from the Elizabethan era and the 20th century, that move me deep inside.