February 2018, some short excerpt from a conversation during a dinner together at the Ristorante „Terzetto“, my favorite Italian, in Hamburg with my friend and colleague Sebastian Schmidt: „Are you writing me something?“ „Do you play it then?“ Handshake. That same night I started collecting motifs for a violin sonata ... I finished the work during the summer family vacation in the USA. Almost omnipresent are from the first note on references and allusions or retrospective considerations on personal reminiscenses shared between Sebastian and me starting with getting to know each other as members of the Gesamthochschulorchester Baden- Württemberg. It must have been in 1988, Sebastian being the concertmaster had just returned from the USA, I tried as a still freshman in one of my first semester, rather less than more successful somehow to get my violin playing under control. Now a lot has happened since then, we have been able to experience a lot of wonderful moments together over many years and now, together with our wonderful colleagues Tanja Becker-Bender and Andreas Röhn, pass on our experiences to today‘s up-and-coming violinists in Hamburg. While working on the violin sonata, I really enjoyed this little journey into my past and very much the first performance by Sebastian - who will probably take on the piano part? - with great anticipation!

In early July 2018, New York-based violinist Natasha Lipkina motivated me to make an attempt to enrich th not exactly opulent repertoire for violin and harpsichord with a piece. I have had a long friendship with Natasha since my studies at Indiana University at the beginning of the nineties, and just last year we played together on various occasions. Natasha forms a duo with the wonderful harpsichordist Olga Martynova, who is also a professor at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. During my summer vacation in the USA, I spent a few leisure hours enjoying the fascinating sound world of these two so different instruments, which led to the creation of the miniatures. Both emotionally and in terms of compositional technique and motif, the elaboration of these short pieces meant a confrontation with Johann Sebastian Bach, the musical overfather I loved so much.