In 1984 the pianist Slava Kantheff met the Austrian chansonnier, guitarist and author Peter Horton and they fell in love. The very next year, for Thomas Gottschalk’s TV programme “Na Sowas”, they spontaneously came up in a live broadcast with Peter Horton’s “Freaky Fingers”, put together within a week. After that they were to be seen in just about all the celebrated TV shows at home and abroad. It was the start of a musical and personal journey that was to last for decades.

Within a very short time they had developed a concert repertoire which, for the first time in the history of music, brought together the guitar and piano as acoustic instruments that each existed in their own right as compositional and interpretive vehicles. As a result, the duo developed their own characteristic timbre.

Slava Kantcheff’s inspired piano playing, backed by her experience as a concert pianist, in concord with Peter Horton’s skills as a guitarist and composer – all this, despite or because of the unorthodox instrumental combination, created new realms of sound.

Looking back, Slava Kantcheff senses how much her intensive collaboration and music-making with Peter Horton have inspired her own personal journey through life and her interpretation of classical compositions.

Her mastery of timbre and touch, this sense of “sticking” to the keys and as it were “merging into” the concert grand and being at one with her instrument, have been shaped and heightened by the almost Brazilian rhythmic challenges of Peter Horton’s compositions.

On September 22, 2023, Peter passed away. It was his wish that Slava should once more record a purely classical album. And so it was that this recording came about at the end of 2024 in the Allerheiligen-Hofkirche (a former church building in the Munich Residenz), which has a special resonance for both artists.