The story behind

I have memories of my father playing the piano at least one hour every day. He just vanished mentally into the scores and did his things. We kids often sat in the sofa right beside the piano and using his playing as others use their radio: background music while reading or playing cards.

I heard a lot of Grieg, Mozart and Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert and some other stuff I do not know what it was. Occasionally he also played the daughter sonatas for us. I was flattered but actually: I was not impressed because he did not play good enough to give justice to his own compositions. In the 80’s he composed mostly for people he played together with for fun. However, I did not hear much of this music because I lived with my mother after the divorce and got to see my dad only on vacations.

At the age of 16 I started to take singing classes and asked my father if he couldn't write some songs for me to the texts of Christian Morgenstern. He agreed and this is how op.37 came to birth. I liked what he wrote but actually, I was not that good a singer and was not capable of performing that right. Only two songs I managed to perform adequately. So most of them were not sung until I started producing in 2013.

Nevertheless, my father was now on to writing songs. He got hold on my poetry and felt inspired to write op.38 including the quite modern piece "Rethorische Frage". He wanted to continue that modern line with two songs in op.39. However, he never let me see it because he thought that was not good enough.

Back to his new romantic style, he wrote more Morgenstern songs. In op.41 he picked a more melancholic poetry repertoire instead of the fun stuff Morgenstern else is known for.

Still none of his songs was ever performed and not much of the other stuff either. Therefore, he stopped composing in the mid 90's when his closest musician friend died.

In 2012, I got a tip about a free music notation program. I downloaded that and found it quite capable. That gave me the idea and the tool to finally edit all the songs properly. And with readable scores it should be possible to find some musicians who actually perform it for a recording to my father's 80th birthday.

I involved my father in the process and while correcting the scores for me he got fired up again for composing and started writing a violin piece for my nephew who had grown out of the school pieces but was not yet ready for the serious violin pieces.

The production of op.38, 40 and 41 was planned as a courtesy production for my dad's 80th anniversary. Additionally it went out to be one of the most amazing days of my life. When hearing professional and highly motivated musicians perform that music, I was closed to tears and had goose bumps all over and I finally understood how good the music was. And when my dad finally got the CD with his own songs I was under the impression that he had kind of the same experience with his own music: that he was not aware of how good it actually sound.

Unfortunately, he had only 6 weeks left to enjoy before he passed. But before that my nephew played the newly composed op.42 for him. (That was in the hospital the day before he died of cancer.)

In his last will, my father left his music as his legacy to me. When cleaning out his apartment we found most of the 42 opus and I am dedicated to make this treasure accessible and available for everyone. Hoping that others have the same pleasure with his music as I have.