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On 7 November 2019, pianist and piano pedagogue Janine Dispa-van Mever passed away at the age of ninety. I came to know her as an excellent teacher, who helped me to largely overcome the professional disease focal dystonia that cast a shadow over my career as a pianist. The funeral card contained a beautiful poem, the Herbstlied by Siegfried August Mahlmann. Inspired by the comforting words of this poem this song came into being in the winter of 2019–20.

The Little Mermaid is based on the well-known fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. The seven-part cycle is completely symmetrical in structure. The total playing time is approx. 30 minutes; with a few exceptions the parts merge into each other. The harmonic language is that of the 19th century, but a certain influence from older musicals and film scores from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s is demonstrable.

The Fantasy on Themes from the Opera Mazeppa by Clémence de Grandval, a French late-romantic composer, is a concert paraphrase of the kind that used to be written often in the 19th century. The opera itself may never be brought to the limelight again, but the score contains many a beautiful moment and I have tried to rescue these from oblivion in the form of a keyboard fantasia.

This fantasy on themes from Massenet’s opera Thaïs broadly follows the action. The instrumental section from the first act, in which Massenet paints the Roman city Alexandria as it stretches along the Mediterranean, is followed by the well-known  Méditation de Thaïs and sections of the ballet music from the second act. From the third act are derived the beautiful love duet and the repetition of the Méditation, now, however, developed more dramatically.